almost like the songs
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: The world is all too full of foolish women who humble themselves when men will fall over themselves to do it for them. Thea might not be doing what people want from her, but she never really has; after all, no one can give you what you want, nothing will. (what if Theon had been a girl? AU)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N- so I had an idea like this lying around I wanted to try out. This is the first part of it, I'm going into A Clash of Kings as well (and maybe further.) It was pretty difficult to imagine…but it was interesting to imagine how some things would change (like her relationships with the Starks) and how some things would translate (like Theon's sexism and role in the family.). **

**Thea doesn't seem like an entirely reliable narrator, but I think that's because she's pretty much Theon, heh…**

**More coming soon **

_Once there was a mermaid, a lady of the sea who could come to the banks of the sea and turn to a lady of the world as she desired. All she needed to do was come to the rocks and her scales would fade to flesh, naturally and normally, and she could have both. And so she became a part of the green world, so much that they made her theirs, so much that when she went back down to the water, they wanted to hear all of her time up on the green earth. And she told it all, for if she did, she would prove she knew both worlds, and she could be the queen beneath the sea, because to know your world you have to know the whole world._

_And she told them and they found she knew more of the green then she did of the sea, and they saw she had forgotten her own ways in favor of the green ways, and they told her she must go back And they laughed and laughed. Green or blue, she was just a foolish maid to them. Maybe that was true. _

_And she went to the rocks to take back the green because of her own home would not have her then the green world must, she came to them from the other side. She took her chariot of sea stone and decided she would make them all come to her, if she had the whole world she'd never be alone. But when she came to the rocks of the shore and went back to the people of the green, they stared at her, for her long hair of the ocean had dried and her clothes of shells had fallen to bits and her crown of seaweed had tangled. They barely recognized her, and they knew when they saw her that she had come from a place that could never match this one. She tried to take back the green world for herself but none would let her, you cannot take what no one will let go of, you cannot take what you cannot hold, and she could not take it in her cold, slipping grasp. The time underneath the ocean had been short, but long enough to show her she was nothing like the green people, she did not know enough of them to tell of their lives._

_In despair and rage she vowed to take back the blue world underneath, and plunged her chariot underneath, and her remaining shell garments smashed over her until she bled and her tangled crown fell into her eyes and when she picked herself up she forgot where the rocks had been, she forgot where her castle had been underneath the water, and she did not know what to regret, and she wept as she drowned, and that is why the ocean is made with salt. _

_But that's just a story, you stupid girl. Stop singing with your grating, weak little voice, those songs are useless. They will never give you what you want. No one and nothing will. _

_Xx_

It's almost amusing, although it's more tiresome, she can't decide. No, it's more than that, sometimes she wants to laugh until she's filled with fire until she's forged to iron until she razes it all to salt and then they'd need to see her for who she must be seen as.

You've got to keep your head in situations like this, if you keep anything. Sometimes it just leaves.

_(You'll never have to fear as long as you remember you're made of iron and you're like the sea. Nothing can break you. You are out of their grasp.)_

It leaves and nothing ever gets it back so she keeps her hands tight together and no one can ever take what she has, what she has left and if she needs to open them up to take more (that's how survival is _done, _people don't give you anything that's good for you in this world) then some risks must be made.

A lady (no matter what they call her, she is that, and nothing less. Not nothing. Nothing less. There are differences) must always remember, and let it be known, because people will forget, but more likely they'll make their own truths. Some things she will never let anyone have.

She _won't_ let it happen.

Oh, she doesn't hate them, not to that extent. Hate's a complicated word, she's thought it before watching how Arya so readily proclaims herself a wolf, how Sansa gracefully proceeds through her life as if she is full aware of her status, how Bran and Rickon seem to have no cares in the world aside from each other's perfect bond, how she had so foolishly thought she'd end up betrothed to Robb (but _no_, she's no Lady, she's just _the ward) ,_ how the _dear couple_ Eddard and Catelyn (_oh, sorry, I forgot, "my Lady") _seem to freeze into statues every time they see her. And even Jon stays there and seems to be more in place there than she is.

Maybe hate's too much of a complicated word for her to really need to waste her time thinking about, she ponders vaguely as she idly adjusts the arrows in her quiver while Arya and Sansa are nearby at a small table, working on needlework. Sansa's friends are there too, the only one whose name she can ever remember is Jeyne (her father is the steward) , other than that she can't keep the names straight. It's not so bad, liking things to be perfect, even if they're not perfect in the end they can surely end up almost at that level. Or perfect just may be another set of letters that complicates and sets things into disarray, as usual, and it's just not worth thinking about. Yes, that could be it. "I _hate_ needlework," Arya grumbles, not under her breath because she doesn't care who hears, Thea wonders if one day when she learns that many care enough that they will listen to what she says, not out of respect but out of dominance, will the little she-wolf be so unrestrained when it's her time for womanhood to rip out her teeth and claws.

Not that she says so, she'd have to be positively stupid to say everything she thought. And she _isn't. _She won't be. The forest is full of wolves, and land is no place for a kraken. And that makes her someone who can't choke on air or gasp in water. She's not so weak as a voiceless hostage although if that's the part she must play…

She lifts the corners of her mouth sharply. "Oh, _Arya," _she crosses her arms. "Why not learn to do things you hate? It's unpredictable." She falls silent after, as if she'd never said anything in the first place. Or thought anything, although she knows that isn't true. A she-wolf is a she-wolf and thoughts get washed back.

Arya doesn't ask what she means, but stares at her, a mix of suspicion and curiosity and just plain annoyed glaring of a girl who doesn't want to be a lady. Well, at least she's something she knows. There's no telling when that will be taken away, although from these long years she's spent with them, Thea can gather, if just by the way Arya acts, that she's genuine.

Arya knits her eyebrows. "Why do you always act like that?" she asks as Jeyne stifles an involuntary giggle. Oh, she's genuine all right, genuinely precocious and rather forward if Thea's going to be honest, but there are worse qualities.

She almost laughs. These Starks are almost too much. In other circumstances she'd have flocked to them, they're such company. "I'm not a_cting_." They don't seem to understand who she is, they look on her with suspicion when she laughs as if she has hidden ideas that she's hiding up her sleeves, waiting to use them, waiting to strike. She doesn't mind. It's not as if she is completely at ease with them, she knows she doesn't fit in with them and they know she doesn't fit in with them. "I don't need to."

Arya blinks and looks away again, in a way that shows how blatantly she's thinking; she's a little _strategist, _this one, and she knows it. Maybe for the better and maybe for the worse depending on pretty much everything. Sansa , who's been rather quiet, as usual, just looks on blankly, innocently. Thea supposes she's a nice, sweet young lady- _lady, _like her wolf. She'd had to bite her tongue to stop herself from laughing until she choked after she'd heard how Sansa had named her wolf _Lady_ and at the time she hadn't even been sure why it got to her so much, most times when things make her laugh she doesn't try and figure out why. You can call a wolf a lady and you can call a lady a wolf but if it can live on land it can't be a damned kraken, the thought had came to her later as she was watching Lady Stark arrange Sansa's hair, sudden as a drunken man's nonsensical joke and she'd confused herself with how sudden it was but put it out of her head.

There are other things to think of, though. Soon the King and Queen are to come visit. Of course, it's for the Starks and she supposes they expect her to stay in the back, unobtrusive and silent, rather than what she really is. True, she isn't as_ presentable _as Sansa (although at least she doesn't run around and ruin her clothes into rags fit for a kitchen wench the way Arya does) and she's not exactly a maiden but really, she is by right a lady of House Greyjoy, if she isn't a part of it in the traditional sense. Although from what she can remember, most of the house runs by tradition. Oh, well, that's how the entire world is. And she can't exactly choose how _that _works, but she can at least make some decisions within its limits. If there's one thing she's learned from men it's that they think because they are men, with swords and lordships and steel and gold, they _can_ and sometimes they really just can't. No wonder she had feared them when she was a stupid little girl who had never seen beyond the ocean's horizon, clinging to her sister's side and weeping at the sight of invaders. Fear is weakness and that might suffice for some but not her. She may have once been a foolish little girl, but becoming a foolish woman who humbles herself when men will fall over themselves to do it for her makes little sense and holds no value to her. A lady must have pride, not that anyone would want her to, but it isn't as if she's ever been what anyone wanted.

She stands thinking to herself gleefully for a few moments before turning on her heel and walking out of the warm room, her layers of clothes swishing dramatically behind her, while Sansa stares quizzically. Sansa's never really been able to wrap her pretty little head around her for some reason or another, they all have their reasons. Jon is the bastard of Winterfell but she's the bitch, or something.

You can be many different things at once.

Back in her quarters she languishes her fingers over the goose feathers from the arrows and bows, wondering what exactly she's going to do when the King's welcoming feast starts at the Hall of Winterfell. Lady Catelyn no doubt will have to trudge through all seven hells to fix up Arya, and Sansa will be in one of those dreamy moods she gets into when she hears one of those songs and she's tolerable but Thea really wishes she'd get her head out of her pretty perfumed clouds (it would be for everyone's benefit. Thea can only stand hearing so many fancies. Sansa is like to choke on them). As for her, she stands in front of her sizeable wardrobe, annoyed by how nothing in it is acceptable. She hears the queen wears gold silk gowns, and rubies in her towering, shimmering hair.

No matter what she looks like, she knows what she's known as, the Ward, like a mounted trophy on a wall. It's better that nobody's ever asked her about it. She won't give them the satisfaction of seeing her miserable about it, she _won't._ And ironborn she is and can never not be, and the ironborn don't take up scraps of pity and charity hungrily and with submission, _do they?_ She has not been _weak. _She can't be. But it's _terrible_ and she's so disgusted with even thinking about it that she just shakes her head and lies down. She's given herself a stomachache through thinking about this whole thing again. She will not waste away her wits with overthinking. She won't submit them.

Maybe, she decides, she should just relax herself until someone calls for her, which they probably won't, and it's better that way, and _then_ put together an idea of what she's going to do with herself tonight. Oh…she knows. There have been some deer out, and while the Starks don't exactly love her tendency to go hunting, they can't deny the fact that she puts some good meat on their table. Besides, it isn't as if she's a proper lady anyway, regardless of how often she looks the part. She'll never be as fair as Sansa or graceful as Lady Stark, but there's really no denying that she has the command that most dull northerners don't.

Command is most likely not the best of words she could use to describe but one day people will describe her and she won't need to explain herself. Command is what she has but cannot use and one day she will. She can feel it.

_(no please don't let them take me, you said you'd protect me,_she'd pleaded long ago when she was a little fool, too young to understand the meaning and importance of fear, too inexperienced to have grown into what she can be, too much of a girl to know that girls are in danger because they're in the world and no other girl can save her from men, too worried to get rid of fear and let it be the hate that protects and defends. Or resentment or distrust, whatever you call it, it works. And she is a kraken because she could not be soft in a world full of iron forged men and imitation women.

_I'm sorry, _her sister had apologized, _one day we'll see each other again. You have to believe me. The men might tell you all sorts of lies. But you can remember. They might be bigger and more powerful than you but you're like me You'll never worry. _She hadn't been anything like Asha, but looking back, she was grateful Asha hadn't tormented and overpowered her like he brothers or made her live in fear like her father. Being in her presence made her feel strong sometimes but mostly it made her feel weaker. _Soon we'll be together again, and then no one will be able to get us. _)

The Stark children, she's glad they never tried to confide with her about it .She couldn't do it, they wouldn't understand and she can barely understand them. Sansa and Arya are confused by her, Rickon is practically a babe, Bran doesn't trust her though he doesn't seem to dislike her , and Robb…has lived a different life and always will. (Even Jon is an outsider but still is as cold and northern as they can come, and he knows it, and he knows she's not. No wonder he can hardly stand her. He doesn't even speak to her alone. Then again, she doesn't either.)

She'd been so fucking foolish, she thinks, almost sickened as she rubs her stomach. If she has some wine, just a little, maybe she'll be just distracted enough. Later she'll do that, she supposes. But just lying down isn't satisfying her for now.

Thea grits her teeth and closes her eyes and slips her hands and reaches deep, so deep her mouth opens and breaths pour out her throat as if she's softly drowning, and she thinks of the waves sliding over her, carrying her back, or somewhere, she reaches deeper and harder and thinks of everyone knowing her name, she almost feels another as she tilts back her head, and it's only when she realizes the softness pooling around her hands is drawn blood sticking between her fingers does she think of why it's always going to be better alone with no one to lower her, and she nearly screams for some reason but it's all right, it's mirth when she collapses grinning in pain down onto her soft mattress, or the closest thing to it.

Perhaps she'll be gentler next time, but that isn't what matters.

Some part of her wonders if the Starks ever wonder where she is, or what she does when she goes out in the evening at times, they haven't asked in a while, although it's clear she hunts for them all. She rises to fix her mussed hair in front of the looking glass in front of her, until she decides it looks clean enough for others to look upon. She remembers wincing as her mother had untangled her hair, that she would try to keep neat but spending time with Asha always put a hole in that. She can't remember how it works, the styles they used to wear on the islands, and she'd never found reason to ask Lady Stark to show her how to present herself, or speak the phrases common in the north or the customs. She'd always been like some mermaid from one of those old tales, who turned to a normal lady once she was beached.

Before the looking glass she smiles with her mouth half open, shaking her hair over her shoulders and licking her lips. Tomorrow she will rise from sleep the way a drowned man rises from his own life, except this isn't anyone's life, and she's no man.

It's like everything else around her- it doesn't fit but it _almost_ does if she tells herself it can.

_Xx_

She's already grown tired of this feast.

It's a few courses in, or a few hours, and nobody she's seated near is anyone she really wants to talk to, but she still keeps her face elusively or obliviously or strangely content, depending on who you ask, her smiling is anything from irritating to uncomfortable to see.

Her senses have been rubbed softer somewhat by the wine she's had- not too much, of course; if she had been seated by the Starks she'd probably not have had more than one glass but she's _not _by the Starks, and though the table is near the king's dias, it isn't as if he's decreed her to not drink. Besides, it takes away the twisting in her head and stomach that comes whenever she gets to thinking about –

She observes the Starks with some sort of fondness and some sort of distance, stroking the rim of her goblet, smirking as she sees Rickon biting the fur lining Arya's sleeves, as he usually does. Sansa looks as if she's chiding him to stop and Arya's laughing and Robb's trying to calm them down and Bran and Lord Stark are quietly observing and Lady Stark looks on warmly, and it's not until she realizes she's looking for the dais in the place it would be if it was the Iron Islands' Great Hall and that she can't remember where it is but she _does_ remember hiding under the tables in the middle of the night with Asha, it's not until then she realizes she's gripped the goblet so hard its contents have spilled and her knuckles are white as a corpses'.

Of course she bites back any words she could have said to draw attention to herself, but all eyes from the table are away from her, so that's all right. Maybe one day they'll all see her.

The queen is looking as a queen should, she has to admit, at least to herself. Goldenhaired and bright, but her smile (see, Thea knows what it means when a woman smiles) is frozen and uneven. But that's all the better for her, and that may serve her well, a clever queen probably should have command and better show false contentment than true dissatisfaction if the time is wrong. Thea is no queen but every queen is a former lady and every lady either is a fool or has been made one by the world. Queen Cersei seems worlds apart from King Robert even as they are seated next to each other, she will occasionally reply to a word he gives her but it's as if she doesn't see him, as if she's talking to storm winds. She scrapes at her palms with her nails, as the eldest prince – Joffrey, he's called- says something to the Queen and she nods her head. A few moments later the queen seems to notice Thea's staring (she'd barely realized she was staring herself) and she nods knowingly.

Startled, Thea looks back, smiling nervously, swallowing abruptly, wondering if the prince had said something about her.

She looks back into her vacant goblet and listens to one of the singers. "The False and The Fair" plays and she closes her eyes to hear the words. About a travelling lord and a lady who sits about her house sewing. Sounds _familiar, _doesn't it, riding lords and gentle ladies, but life isn't a song (not wholly), it's full of the falsely fair and she is one of them. Her eyes shifting, she gazes back to Sansa, who appears to be listening intently. (If her fate is to be unaltered, one day a lord will come riding for her and take her away by leave of her lord father and make her a fine lady wife, maybe while she is doing the sewing she takes such care in, she will receive the betrothal news. She knows it will be Sansa who in the end will be the true northern lady of the family, not Arya and not any woman the boys may one day take.)

It proceeds as if it had been played just for her. She can't be a kraken here or a wolf anywhere , can she, if she's going to be honest and everyone knows wine makes even a liar honest. Sansa's face is pensive from the lyrics but enjoying their beauty or what it is she hears in it but for a moment when she sees Queen Cersei look over the hall, she sees the queen's mouth fall in some strange, unhappy look, directed at her-

But the queen looks to the Starks and that is that and once again she is the Ward of Winterfell, better and easier to not notice. It's more comfortable for everyone then, isn't it?

Yes, she rolls her eyes sideways, observing the Starks, the wolf pack of cubs and the mother and father, protective and fierce and strong and almost wild as the first men they came from.

Music throbs in her head as she tries to sleep that night, but the ocean waves carry her away in her bed along with her hands over her eyes. As if a blessing from the Drowned God (but she's a long way from his dominion, this is the place where trees rule life) she does not dream, or if she does, she doesn't remember, and if that's the case that's just as acceptable.

_Xx_

Thea's never been sure how to talk to Bran, possibly because she's never had to be anyone's older sister, but on the other hand she's no one's sister here.

And on yet another hand- it always seems that there are more and more sides to events every time something happens around her- she hadn't been exactly sure what she's supposed to do now that Bran has fallen and lost consciousness; Lady Stark had stayed in his room at all hours and really, that was reason enough to stay clear. (Maester Luwin had asked her wasn't she going to go visit poor Bran, and well…why? He wouldn't be able to see or hear her and even if he could he probably wouldn't want to.) Anyway, grieving women aren't healthy company. Thea never grieves. She never has cause to, so she will be fine. Fine as Bran is- he is a healthy young boy who will grow up to be a man like his father, supposedly, as long as he now knows not to try too hard and mightily. Once they become men they throw themselves as if daring the gods to let them crash. But Thea knows, she's always been suspended. Even if she does fall she has the ocean to carry her up. She always has had that. Inside, at least.

But now she has the fields, brushed with dull summer, and the hunt and endless trees and fluid winds blowing her hair into her eyes as she squints and looks for wherever the deer had gone.

"You should tell your brother," she says slyly, half under her breath as she leans forward on the horse, "I am glad he's awakened."

"Why don't you just tell him yourself," Robb says, frowning slightly, but not as a real suggestion, he knows. He's got to know even if he'll never really understand, but then again, she doesn't want anyone to understand. That wouldn't do any good- it's beneath her to beg for people's pity anyway.

"I could," she grins. "But you know I've been told I always smile at the wrong things. We would not want your little brother to think I'm happy he's lost his legs' use, would I?" she looks away. "Really, Robb…I wanted him to wake up. But like this… I think it's not …right," she struggles with the words, to her chagrin. But that's to be expected. He stays silent again. So she changes the subject. What else can she do? "But you know what I think, don't lie." That might be a lie. They should know what to expect by now or else they never will".I plan to find the largest deer imaginable and put my feather right through his head," she boasts quietly as to not scare off any prospective prey. A true hunter has once been hunted, to be good at the job. True, she rarely gets them in the right spot, but she does what's necessary. Even without getting her clothes filthy. If it wasn't so improper she'd be the picture of a fine lady. It's almost enough to make her laugh all over again. She will never be what they would see in someone else. But they see her, all right, they've seen her, they all have. They may feign or have real courtesies but most of these Northerners know she's never belonged there and never will. But she _is_ here, and she'd spread her lips the slow, cold way men spread their hands over her, but she scowls in concentration, shooting off the arrow.

The feather flies through the air, swift and light and gray and _mortal_ like them all, and the deer perishes, colliding to the ground. She crosses her arms, staring off at the dying deer- she couldn't immediately kill it. But that's fine. "Are you happy for your sister?" she asks out of nowhere, just out of nowhere as the feather is. "One day she'll be queen of us all." Her mouth turns up, but this smile isn't jovial. It's softer than she'd try to make it but her face isn't what she's thinking of right now. "But first she must wed Prince Joffrey." She thinks of the days when she and Asha used to pretend to be queens of the Iron Islands together, before they were old enough to know that the Islands were iron but not of the throne and they had brothers and there can rarely be a queen but never two, too young to know that she would become who she was, too young to know who she was. (_My crown is made of seaweed, and yours of seashells,_ Asha had said.) But Sansa isn't a little girl, she knows what she must do. A woman will stand by a man but two women don't stand together. _She_ doesn't control it, none of them do.

Robb doesn't say anything for a moment, probably torn between his usual "that's an odd question, Thea" or something else better suited to what she's saying. "She will be the Queen someday, won't she," he says, and she wonders what he thinks of it or if he regularly ponders it. "Well, she's my sister." Thea almost laughs bitterly but decides against it. Even she isn't that tasteless. "I should think she'd be a great Queen. A wolf queen of the Seven Kingdoms." His voice sounds wrong for the statement. Maybe, Thea wonders, it's not just his family's relationship with the Lannisters, and Robb's clear dislike of Joffrey. (he is not Prince Joffrey in her head.)

"The future wolf queen and Winterfell lord, brother and sister," she wryly adds. "I'll be your sister, too, even then, when you've taken a family and the years have gone," she says with energetic flatness.

"You'll have land and honor of your own," he tells her in passing.

"Maybe. But I don't think I'll like what would come to me then." He looks to her, expecting her to continue. "You know as well as I that I don't fit the form of a lady," she raises an eyebrow. "I'll don't think I'll have anything to inherit, and even if my father…" she doesn't like talking about them, here especially, "ships me off to a man, he'd never be anything but a prison to me." Her face sobers. "She'll be Queen but in a cage made of iron. I don't envy your sister." (She doesn't wonder why they don't all see her as family.) She closes her eyes and raises her chin to feel the breeze flowing around her head. "Sometimes I hate men," she tells, so quietly it's as if she tells the wood, but it's not the wood that listens. They never do. (It's not him. Not _one_. )

He doesn't ask her why. She doesn't say it the way a weeping, vengeful woman with a no-good man in her life would. She says it as if she has felt for so long she has forgotten what it really feels like.

"My sister may be betrothed to Joffrey…" he says the name with suppressed heat, "but Thea, I know how she is…and how we are…" _We_ _Starks, _he's said. His pack. "She wouldn't want to hear that." She can't tell if he's trying to guilt her or just being himself. Now that he's _Lord Robb of Winterfell _with Lord Stark away she's not been able to tell. Even when he keeps her by his side at times, when the other men come. Maybe she knows them all as much as they know her.

"Yes," she smiles with serenity. Of course, she's right, or he is. "She'll do well. She is a lady of Winterfell. She's a wolf, like the rest of you." And wolves are together, but even alone they are fierce and indomitable. And she stalks off to collect her kill, gathering her skirts in one hand as she slings the bow over her shoulders.

She rests easy that night, far from the sharp red prince and far from iron. A part of her can tell herself all sorts of things, but there's no real point. What good can a thought do? She's no fool like Sansa could be. (If she had been Sansa, a part of her thinks, she'd have gone anyway, where else would she have to go? And another part of her thinks that it's useless to think about it because a kraken ward of nineteen years without a maidenhood or land wouldn't be seen fit to be a king's whore. But the other part of her knows thinking about all that is just as useless as Bran trying to call upon for return the barely-remembered green children of the forest or whatever it is he's named them. He must, she knows, really want a different world. One that would have him better.)

Lady Thea Greyjoy succumbs to sleep. _Succumbs_ and dreams of sobbing uncontrollably into clawlike hands that rake at her hair, hands that cling to iron bars, wounded hands caked with drying blood and shit, ripping out hair that's not the plain black that's hers, but she wakes up and forgets it in the middle of the night. A dream is a dream, and she is no wolf but she's not weak, and she can handle more than what she's given.

_Xx_

She's direct, sometimes. Or many times.

The new wildling woman who stays with them is called Osha, like her sister's name, almost, but she makes no mention of this. She does not speak of her family outright often enough to merit observance, and there's no true reason to do it, unless she was asked- of course she isn't- or to try and make the Stark wolf pack envy the great kraken horde. What do you call a group of krakens? She doesn't know if they're meant to be in a group, if there's a name; there must have been some legend she can't recall. If a sword is unused it grows rust, like the memory. She has no use for a sword, and as for memory, she lives in the present.

She hadn't meant to harm him. If she had she wouldn't have lived so close to them for so long and if she didn't care she wouldn't have done anything but she really shouldn't have to apologize for this and the very _thought_ of their judgmental faces (she hadn't even had to look at them to know. She always know what people think here, or just about.) It's not as if the whole of them would ever entirely trust her, she can accept that because some of these people she could never love, but –

She clenches her fist, seething to herself. _I was right, _she thinks. _The wolves and Robb were there but I saw those wildmen and the woman and I stopped them. They could have killed him and the wolves ad Robb and taken me the way those forest men kidnap women even if they're not beautiful or royal. That wild woman looked at me like I wouldn't even be worth stealing and Robb looked at me like I was the one who tried to take his brother's life and Bran looked at me like he feared me, I saved his life and he fears me. _Her lips curl.

A godswood is no place for her, but thinking like that does no good when she's here and that's really all that matters right now.

There are the pine trees where she and Sansa and sometimes Jeyne used to braid each others' hair and listen to each other's stories, here are the bushes where she first managed to learn how to use a bow and arrow, there is the heart tree she had stopped attempting to pray to long ago. But she never felt like she could face the tree despite the fact that it was only a tree, and she's beyond chasing small songbirds for practice, and her hair is plain and dull and stories have all the maidens and heroes because life has no room for them.

Nearby, Rickon plays roughly by one of the smaller trees as if he's trying to break it; it would bring no surprise to her if he did, he's a true wolf if there ever was one, wild and full of bite and ferocity, and she knows him better than she could know any of her dead brothers now.

At his growling call of recognition to her (all he has been told, that she knows, was that someone tried to hurt Bran but he's all right; still she can't help wondering if any of them could ever think she couldn't be trusted around them. She's not their sister but she's getting a bit old to be their ward, and a bit too much of everything for them to dispose of with a marriage. She's not their sister, but she's more than nothing to them.) But Rickon doesn't know that, he isn't old enough to know how to be a fool, he's just a child of four. He gleefully rubs his hands along the fur trim of her hemlines (she stiffens, but says nothing, Rickon isn't really someone who can be reasoned with and it will probably serve him well later in life.)

She sniffs against the strangely cold winds (winter is coming, they always say, but it never has, but that doesn't mean it never will, it feels like it all stays still when she's here, maybe it will when winter comes and she will learn if all the seawater has bled out from her and she will turn to ice like all the rest. But she will _not _think that.) A crooked smile works its way onto her face, one she can't exactly help. "I did not know you were here," she tells him, putting a hand to her straight hip and tilting her head. "And were you given leave to come out?" she doesn't actually care to tell him what to do and what not to do. It's just courtesies, and they are not one of her greater talents, but they are there for reasons.

He gives her no true answer, but he does let go of her skirts, which gives her some relief, despite the fact that they're too dark of a gray to show any dirt stains. "Do you know where Shaggydog is?" he demands, heavier in his tone than his child's voice would sound. He looks up at her, squinting in the sun and in questioning. But he's always known her.

She frowns halfway. "I should think he's close by." The direwolf had ended up being chained recently , something she had no part in deciding and hadn't really minded one way or another, but she did wonder if the great freak of nature would soon grow large enough to break out of its captivity. He looks as if he doesn't hear her, but then again it's a long time since she's been a child and she's never been a boy, so maybe that's it.

"Are you leaving too?" he asks her, this time, less feral and more…like a child should be, but she can't say she knows what children are like, just the children she's known. He intonates sharp and high with his voice and she doesn't know what to tell him, her eyes widen and shift . _I can handle one question from one child, _her mind scoffs. But just as she begins to tell him no, why would he ask that, there is no cause to talk of that, he crosses his small arms. "Osha says the winter's already here. Everyone's going away." _That wild woman is spreading her mythic thoughts everywhere and you are too young to know that you are to be a man of house Stark, too young to know who you speak to. Boys think they are immortal. Boys know but do not understand they will be men. _It was true that house Stark was not unified. No one ever comes back, she'd heard him say before and thought nothing of it because they were just words.

A chill comes over her, and she draws the fur closer around her body. Her lips pull far away into the sort of smile that seems to almost make Rickon relent with his questions, at least for now. "Sometimes men must leave. But do you not know me, Rickon?" He's got to understand he won't need to cling to her as a last resort. Sometimes she gets the feeling that is what he does, especially now that Bran cannot walk and Lord Stark is gone and even Shaggydog is tied. Myths and stories and trees can't tell the future, even men cannot; she knows that much even in her state. She's lived, of course. "Have I ever left?" Not in his life. Not in Lady Thea, ward of Winterfell's life. "Why, I am the ghost of Winterfell," she grins wickedly, gesturing with a hand, swift and light. She really is; sometimes she wonders if they notice she is there, or if they just expect her to be there, and if they all should leave, where is she to go? It is strange, she thinks, that Rickon should worry on her behalf. "And nothing can move the ocean." Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, but really, most times when she says something of note, she'll get a few disapproving looks. So she may as well speak if she will have to pay the price anyway.

Rickon gazes wonderingly at her, tilting his head, as deep in thought as a child so young can be. "Bran _prayed_ for you," his anxiety is undeveloped, though, and that of a child's, just that, not a man's and when he is a man, he will not speak or think in that way. Sometimes she prays, but inside of her. The tree is not hers, there is no ocean. _But didn't you just say nothing could move the ocean? _She's no holy woman. She bites her lip and wraps her arms around her waist, expecting him to tell her more, but he cuts it all off. "When I get Shaggydog, Osha says I can ride him."

Thea raises an eyebrow tightly. Personally, she doesn't care whether Rickon decides to ride his wolf into the Stark manor and through all the rooms, but the mention of Osha sets her off. The wild woman is nearby, too, she notices, with Bran and Hodor by the blue moss. She pays them no mind and grins halfway the way she does when she has secrets, a sliver of her teeth showing. (The one that used to make Sansa's eyes widen uncomfortably, but she hasn't come back. Maybe King's Landing really is just like her songs, despite what Robb says and everyone else around is thinking about the Prince, despite what she knows must be true. Sometimes life is like a song, there are so many songs out there.)

_Xx_

Traitor, they call Lord Stark. Dead, they call him.

She does not mourn inside her numbed, shocked heart.

And she is not surprised.

"My lady…" Maester Luwin tentatively asks her, he's gray like the rest of Winterfell. She doesn't answer, keeps her face as still as stones, the way Asha taught her how once and she'd forgotten how, but that's fine, because she has no tears in her. She will not mock this house as a hostage weeping for her captor in front of his sons and she has nothing to prove and the way the old maester's weathered voice grasps for something to hold onto in her, searches for some feeling he can give wisdom and comfort to. It's too bad for him she needs neither, it's too bad for her that it doesn't matter if she remembers how to fix her emotions, because she doesn't know what they are.

She left them all alone to mourn. She knows where she's welcome, at least.

She turns her head, her lips at an angle she isn't so sure is natural, her shoulders hunched and tight. "Yes?" she looks blankly. She will not be the weeping woman around here. Lord Stark showed her his blade and his home and land, showed her that he had as much love as he did justice, and justice was not always gentle. There is no reason to weep.

_One time she'd gone to the godswood and she'd been young and stupid and Maester Luwin had to explain to her what it was for, it was for those who loved and worshipped the Seven and those who were from the First Men, that and more, and she'd had no idea what he meant and he told her there was nothing to feel bad about, it wasn't her fault she didn't understand, but she could. Why did he say that? _

She had stopped fearing him when she was still a child, anyway. As for Maester Luwin, he had never seemed to understand that she was of a different faith than he was, and there really was no meaning in him trying to use his Seven to save her.

Save her. From what?

She keeps her lips flat against each other, mouth dry and prickling, her head down. Something inside her feels heavy- she's tired, she realizes. It's a weak feeling, the feeling of holding too much for too long.

She wonders if she should change to mourning attire, but she's already wearing black. A weak laugh almost escapes from her throat, but it's trapped too deep. She almost always wears black, doesn't she? Winterfell is awaiting winter is the land of death, its lord who died a traitor's death regardless of his true nature.

Lord Stark was lawful, she knows that much. He was not the sort who'd lie at a friend's deathbed to steal his throne. _I know you could have done it. Any of us _could. '_Could' is just another word. _She wonders what her father would have done. But that isn't relevant. _I know what he would have done, though, Lord Stark. _It had always been a matter of "he" and not "you," even when she spoke directly with him. She hadn't hated him any more than the others.

"This cannot be easy for you. It is not for any of us…"

He looks at her the way he looks at her when she's ill, head tilted and eyes softened. It confuses her_. A man should not concern himself like an old woman in the face of another's death. Especially not with me. A woman would cry. But I am just me. _None of them really know who she is. _Is that how Lord Stark felt?_ _ You were cold as the winters to everyone else and no one could get through until they did. _

She stares blankly (at least, that's what she thinks) at the master. "I pray for Lord Stark, my lady. And for all of us," he says wearily.

She blinks and he leaves her behind and even after he and the atmosphere (gray and wet and miserable and soft) leaves she still feels dull and heavy.

The rest of the day she stays in her chambers to leave Robb and Bran and Rickon to each other, the wolves must stay in their pack; and she'll find them later, but right now is really not the best time for her to clamor to them.

That night she ventures outside and lies with one of the kitchen servants who calls her m'lady because he can't remember her name or where she's from or who her father is and the funny thing is if she was him she probably wouldn't either, and his touch is hard and angry and hers is thrashing and slow. She wonders who he imagines she is (gold Queen Cersei or famed Lyanna Stark or one of the maids from the songs or bloody Lady Catelyn) and if he thinks she's thinking of someone else (she barely ever thinks of anyone, really, not that she's ever thought about it) and it's terrible and she almost laughs but she just opens her mouth and breathes out sharply, that's all she's got in her in terms of humor for now. She falls limp backwards, lying languidly on the splayed-out fur throw, wondering if she drank enough moon tea would her organs fall out, wondering if Sansa's maidenhood is still there now that the boy king has made sure her father's gone, wondering if she's a traitor in the eyes of King's Landing, wondering what she would do if she was anything but herself.

He nearly shouts as he goes deeper into her, shoving in like a smith with difficult materials, and a smile curls over her mouth but it's cold and all she can think of is Lady Stark's disapproving face as she would walk in on her, Lord Stark's sword swinging over the criminals' heads (could have been mine one day if he lived but he can't.) She pulls at her hair and groans and remembers Lady Catelyn.

After he's spent and she's half soaked she lies down flat, eyes blankly staring at the stars from the opened window. "What does it feel like?" she asks, but he doesn't notice.

When he falls asleep she makes her way back into her chambers quietly so that no one must notice her. Tomorrow, she tells herself, she will give whatever comfort she can salvage in herself to Bran and Rickon, and give her support to Robb.

That night she dreams again, but she doesn't try, it just comes from her effortlessly, as she swings a sword as big as her body down to a man's neck. "I did it," she says triumphantly, lightheaded, and the man to her side watches. She assumes it's Lord Stark, not Robb, Eddard. "Look," she proves." As you said. The man who passes the judgment giving the execution." What had he said? Yes, that was it .She smiles crookedly. The boys will be so happy for them all, she thinks, they'll have a celebration. All of them together again as if nothing ever happened.

The man turns but he is not Eddard Stark, she can't recognize him at all and he doesn't seem to even look at her. "You are no man," he touches her shoulder pityingly, coldly, and when she looks down at her criminal there's a headless body and her head lying on the ground, open eyes and soaked in ocean water. It's spreading and covering her feet and she can't move and only then, when she realizes she's the only one trapped in the pooling mass of water and blood, does she allow herself to openly weep.

There is no peace but with the Drowned God, she can remember, though she never tried to remember the Drowned God. There is no Drowned God here.

_Xx_

The Great Hall is swimming with golden celebration, or something of the sort, and she is in the current.

There's always a battle in the world. It just comes under different circumstances. And circumstances are a bitch. It's true, really; people want to make their own truths but _am I the only one who does not see the truth that already is there?_

It would not surprise Thea. She is not sure what _would _surprise her, but that is the definition of surprise. She doesn't like surprises. It's a weak feeling; one she hates and knows. To hate something you've got to _know_ it even if you love it. And right now, she doesn't know everything, but no one can, at least she's thriving in it, and she's got ale in her to light her like kindling and the battle has been won and all is as right as it can be.

(Sometimes she hates them and sometimes she loves them and sometimes she doesn't know if they cancel each other out and it doesn't matter what she feels, and it doesn't, because there's nothing she can do to change it. She can change how she feels. She _can._ But to what? _I will not think of this. _The world is full of dangers of varying degrees, and men know they are not invincible enough to fly without falling but she knows, _she knows, _you can fall from thought. Women are fools, because they think they're safer than men are. They're wrong. In this world the feather is just as great and sharp as a sword, in this world an army is big but what's inside looms larger. Nothing is _safe._)

_Well, you sweet little fools, of course nothing is safe. Great men fall by hundreds, impaled like meat through spears while all the wrong ones live, and I could have killed any one of them from the side with the right aiming of my arrow provided they went along. _

With that rationalization, her sex doesn't matter, not entirely, not now. It isn't as if she's suited in armor and a helm, waving a sword and swerving out of the pathways of lumbering Lannister bannermen, drenched in blood and dirt. It isn't as if she's mouthing half-formed gossip to court members, it isn't as if she's recklessly living on the edge of the cage and the opening. (She hasn't said anything about Lord Stark's treason and imprisonment. It really isn't her place, but moreover, she doesn't want to enter that place.)

The tables are filled with men and she folds straight, her hands interlocked with one another, glaring out of the corner of her eye as she recounts the day's events, and for a few moments they all forget they can never keep track of who she is and they all forget the dying. Or the dead. It isn't exactly the time for pleasant thoughts.

"You would not believe," even though most were there, she says, her voice rushing with drink and exhilaration and attention, "some tried to flee from our men, but we- the valleys were closed at either end, and out of the darkness came our men with sword and lance." She swallows, tossing a strand of unkempt hair over her shoulder. In the dimmed lights they all look the same. "The Lannisters had to have thought the Others were coming once Robb sent out his wolf…" her eyes slit tight in wicked satisfaction. "Did you know I saw him take out a man's arm?" at least, that was how she remembered it, for the story purposes it does not matter much. There are legends and there are the histories, but all histories are legends. She can sense some of the men aren't listening, but she doesn't mind. "The horses went _mad_." It was true, she could tell. "Men were flying everywhere-"

"Excuse me. Thea." She snaps her head around, eyes blinking and shifting, wondering how Lady Stark managed to come so close to her and yet go unnoticed, how she does that. She supposes she'll never understand Lady Stark, or most ladies, but she doesn't alter the highness in her loping grin, even if she tones it down a few notches, just as a haphazard courtesy. Is it a courtesy if you only use half of effort? She brushes a hand over the side of her face, looking up at Lady Stark. "Where might I find my son?" Poised and unmoving. Lady Stark is probably beautiful.

_You may find him right where he's expected to be, right where he's meant to be. My lady, it is a great stroke of luck I am not your son, _she thinks, full of sharp witted good humor. Of course she is, she's iron and no lion can touch her and they have had their losses upon losses but she's with them, she's a part, isn't she? And they're rising and that means they're rising again and that means it doesn't matter what's behind them, they're getting harder and stronger with every moment, and if she's stronger than anyone in her way gets weaker. _If they all thought like that then maybe some of the losses wouldn't have even happened! _ A part of her thinks, but knows that may very well be a bit too much, if anyone's a moderate here, it's she. "Lord Robb is by the godswood, my lady," she says. _You knew I would know? Or you thought I would be with him here…he has his men. Unless you thought- _she smirks to herself, nearly shaking her head. _Winterfell's new Lord Stark wouldn't. I think we both shall have to venture elsewhere for a time if we need company. _But Lady Stark leaves anyway, coolly but softly glancing at her before leaving. Thea wonders if she should say something to her about how she is handling this wonderfully but the thought is hilarious. Lady Stark doesn't want her forced, badly veiled sympathy for having a dead husband and a warring son and a somewhat unsteady path ahead. _Well, not really unsteady ,_ she thinks, but still, all that talk of mothers' fear can't be for nothing-

_(She remembers her mother. Sometimes. With grey outlines and hair and skin, grey in the lightless rooms of what was her home. Or still must be. Her face isn't clear but when she was young she never thought her mother was very clear either. _

"_My baby," she'd call her. She would never call Asha that, or maybe she had once called her brothers that, but her brothers are all gone and her mother is a lifetime away. Besides, she's mad. She hadn't understood well at age ten. But now she does, as best as she can. _

_Her brothers had all died and left the family with two girls and two empty spaces. That is what comes from being a traitor, you see, pain on all sides. And that is what comes from being a woman, her mother had all but spelled it in simple words to her. You lose life and mind if you do not keep yourself safe from the ways of men but it's just so…._

"_You must never leave me," she'd told her and Thea had thought it was kind and gentle, she'd fallen back into her mother's arms. "There are wars in this world…and you are not going to be able to stop them. You are an iron girl, are you not?" she'd smiled desperately, lips trembling. They both had in their own ways. "And you are the sea. As long as you remember what you are and you do not try to bend yourself or move yourself…" now she understands. "You will be safe. With me." Her hands had traced her hair. _

_She supposes even Lady Catelyn worries about her son as her own lady mother had once worried for her. But she can't reach.) _

And so she keeps her head up. Always. Better too high in others' eyes than low enough to fall. She is iron and ocean, and no one must needs _protect _ her; she is no fool, this is a struggle and the Lord of Winterfell is the son of a traitor and the King is dead and replaced by a boy and she may not fit but _does anyone truly fit? _She tells herself. As long as the world is full of makeshift kings and uneasy alliances and shadowed _games_ of treason and politics and coin, she will still be the ghost of Winterfell, the ward who leaves shadows wherever she is connected to. It does not matter that one of the men offered her coin for her sex as she went back to her tent the night before, it does not matter that the Lannisters are backed by the king, it does not matter that her father was a traitor before Lord Stark was. They're all mortal. And she is no more mortal than any one of them.

Her poor, mad mother. She could never be safer than her dead brothers, no matter where she stayed or what words she fed her.

_Xx_

She's never been to a true war council before. She looks rather out of place there, amidst all these men, but Lady Stark is there too, the mother wolf howling promises to the people to protect Winterfell or something. Besides, she's always out of place. It makes her look distinguished, she tells herself. She wears green wool and a cloak of gray so dark it is almost black in the cold, dull light of the Great Hall, her hair flowing down her shoulders the way Lannister red blood flowed down the hills, the way feathers flow down the air to set in for their kill.

And she knows whatever they decide, they will gain for victory. It will be long, most likely, and the men will shout and throw around their titles and she will smirk until she holds her head in her hands (it can be amusing but after a while it gets tiring) but these are_ northmen_. She knows what can be expected.

Except when it's down, but she won't meekly curl up for these men, she won't stand as if she doesn't know how, won't pretend she's nothing more than some camp follower. She is at the side of the Lord of Winterfell and lady mother and she may not go down in history, may not be in the songs along with the wolves, but they all now know. They cannot deny her. It makes her want to laugh until she breathes flame as these men shout their own names as if the others _care, _these men, she sees, when resented with what is a rebellion, raging amongst each other and throwing their weight. She has patience for this sort though, so far, she's had ten years' worth. The old men and the Mormont she-bear (Lady Mormont's age seems a bit odd for a warrior, even if some of the men are her age, even if the lady herself isn't entirely intolerable) gathered around the table seem almost…ready to come together and explode. It would thrill her in some other circumstance, and she crosses her arms and grins with a closed mouth underneath her hooded cloak, watching Lady Catelyn intensely listen, as if she is iron too.

_They all seem to not notice each other. Do they notice me, at the side of Lord Stark of Winterfell even as I stay silent? They notice him and he has said nothing. _He seems as if he's across the ocean from her, from all of them, and ever since his father has died the ocean stretches wider. She knows oceans.

What she does not know is why these lords move so suddenly and swing their allegiance to Renly Baratheon; by virtue of not loving the red boy king, she can gather. King Renly…the title falls flat to her and at the mention of his name she does not stand straighter like some of his followers do. If there's one thing she learned ten years ago, anyone can change allegiance and declare themselves to be someone. It doesn't prove much. She had no king for years. Just Lord Stark.

It seems Robb agrees, she raises her eyes as he says firmly, "Renly is not the king." For a moment she wonders if he means to continue the circling argument for another few hours, she's starting to get restless and everyone else has passed that point.

"You cannot mean to hold to Joffrey, my lord. He put your father to death…" says Galbart Glover. She does not remember all their names although spending so much time with them helps her remember.

"That makes him evil," Robb says with enough conviction to nearly give her shivers. She's held no feelings one way or another for Joffrey as a king (as a person, however, she supposed she would have to agree with Jon in his opinion) …but after he went and beheaded Lord Stark, she'd thought she couldn't love him. _I never truly loved Lord Stark either, I never could, _she tells herself sometimes. Sometimes she tells herself _he was what I had and what I had was not something I regret living. _"But I do not know that it makes Renly king." How strange, she thinks. The more options you don't like the more you create. "Joffrey is still Robert's eldest trueborn son. So the throne is rightfully his by the laws of the realm. Were he to die, and I mean to see that he does, he still has a younger brother." _You speak of the law and killing a king in the same sentence. Lord Stark you may be, but Robb is still inside, isn't he? _"Tommen is next in line after Joffrey."

"Tommen is no less a Lannister," counters the one called Merq Piper. As if it matters.

Robb is postured stiff and cornered. "As you say. Still, if neither one is king, how could it be Lord Renly? Lord Renly is Robert's younger brother. Bran can't be Lord of Winterfell before me, and Renly can't be king before Lord Stannis." No mention is made of Princess Myrcella, but if Thea notices, it's just for a slight moment.

"Lord Stannis has the better claim," the Mormont lady pushes as Thea lowers her eyes, trying to recall what she know about Stannis but even with a small amount of effort she realizes she barely knows anything about him. Maybe he'll want the allegiance of Winterfell, maybe he's like Robert or Joffrey or none.

Marq Piper fires yet again. "Renly is _crowned._ Highgarden and Storm's End support his claim, and the Dornish will not be laggardly. If Winterfell and Riverrun add their strength to his, he will have five of the seven great houses behind him. _Six_ if the Arryns bestir themselves! Six against the rock! My lords, within the year we will have all their heads on pikes, the queen and the boy king, Lord Tywin, the Imp, The Kingslayer, Ser Kevan, all of them! That, if we join with King Renly. What does Lord Stannis have against that, that we should cast that aside?" She stays.

"The right," Robb does not move or shift his face and it's so familiar to her, and it shouldn't be.

"Do you suggest we declare for Stannis?" Edmure asks and it comes to her that whatever choice is made, she is bound to, and that she may be a ward but now she is tied closer, and she doesn't know what to feel. _This is not about feeling! This is about the seven kingdoms. And those are beyond your control. So just go along with it. Renly or Stannis would be better than Joffrey…most likely. They all seem the same when you see enough of them._

"I don't know," Robb says and neither does she and she expected no other answer but it's a terrible answer. "The gods did not answer when I prayed to know what to do. The Lannisters killed my father for a traitor, and we know that was a lie, but if Joffrey is the lawful king and we fight against him, we will be traitors." _Have we not already fought against him in some ways? You're connected. And so we all are. _That much she understands. Daughter of the rebellion.

"My lord father would urge caution," the one called Stevron smiles strangely and she frowns. Caution is meaningless now, is it not? What does she know. "Wait, let these two kings play their game of thrones." _It's always the games that are most dangerous. "_When they are done fighting, we can bend our knees to the victor, or oppose him, as we choose. With Renly arming, likely Lord Tywin would welcome a truce . . . and the safe return of his son. Noble lords, allow me to go to him at Harrenhal and arrange good terms and ransoms . . . " She crosses her arms, expecting an answer with patient hunger. Robb won't let this man take over and let them lie down, and if he does, Lady Catelyn won't stand for it even if she is just a woman in a room of men, she'll find _some _way, she doesn't know how. The sounds of men shouting in opposition drown out her thoughts and she smirks. _I was right, _even though she hadn't agreed or disagreed with anyone. _That's the only way to be right. _

"Why not a peace?" suggests Lady Stark once the clamor has died down and Thea's eyes snap open. _My lady, you have taught me well and I know due to your family that peace has prices…._

The room silently stares at her but in Thea's mind there is a furious disaster of inconclusive thoughts that tear at her mind until Robb lays down his sword on the table, glinting and bare. "My lady, they murdered my lord father, your husband." He really is a Lord of Stark by now, or he always has been and just has not had the awakening. _A wolf cannot swim, _she'd heard once. "This is the only peace I have for Lannisters."

And the hall erupts in raucous agreement, clanging metal and shouted supports, as she smiles to herself, the picture of contentment in the midst of what she knows must be war (just a game to kings). "My lords," Lady Stark's coldly strong voice calls and they listen, they do, with all of their minds. "Lord Eddard was your liege, but I shared his bed and bore his children. Do you think I love him any less than you?" she does not dare allow with her voice an answer, her tone is steel and pain and blood, and Thea knows that if Lord Stark would have beheaded her for treachery, Lady Stark, no matter her course of action, would not play the part of a docile woman. She is nearly at the edge of her seat with shock and captivation, fists clenched. "Robb, if that sword could bring him back, I should never let you sheathe it until Ned stood at my side once more . . . but he is gone, and hundred Whispering Woods will not change that. Ned is gone, and Daryn Hornwood, and Lord Karstark's valiant sons, and many other good men besides, and none of them will return to us. Must we have more deaths still?" It's almost sad, she thinks, of Lady Stark. All that loss must have harmed a part of her, a part that needs to be kept small and inside, so it cannot take up too much room, so there will not be a large vacancy when it is destroyed. But Thea is no fool. Swords bring no one back but they can make sure that some will be kept from death. Why else use them? There are reasons but is that not one?

"But my lady, you are a woman," the Greatjon says, and Thea pities her almost, feels stares of the room of men (they look to Robb but she is close, too close, they must _think) _ her teeth scrape against each other as she nearly rolls her eyes. Pointing out the obvious can't do anything now. But it always happens somehow. "A woman does not understand these things." _I almost do, _she thinks bitterly, poisonously, _and of course almost is never anywhere near close to enough._

"You are the gentler sex," adds Lord Karstark mournfully. "A man has a need for vengeance." That he does, Thea repeats in her head.

Lady Stark goes hard, but with grace, as Thea can hardly imagine how she manages to do it. "Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark, and you would see how gentle a woman can be," and it is more than a mere threat, and if Thea had been a weaker woman she most likely would have swooned." Perhaps I do not understand tactics and strategy . . . "Lady Stark begins again, "but I understand futility. We went to war when Lannister armies were ravaging the riverlands, and Ned was a prisoner, falsely accused of treason. We fought to defend ourselves, and to win my lord's freedom. Well, the one is done, and the other forever beyond our reach." By this time the whole hall has gone silent, unbelievably so. Along with Thea's mind. " I will mourn for Ned until the end of my days, but I must think of the living. I want my daughters back, and the queen holds them still. If I must trade our four Lannisters for their two Starks, I will call that a bargain and thank the gods. I want you safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from your father's seat. I want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed a woman and father a son. I want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my lords, and weep for my husband."

Thea's eyes do not blink, her smile stays at a nearly uncomfortably relaxed, fixed angle across her face, and her head and hair feel too heavy to think under.

Brynden Stark calls, "Peace. Peace is sweet, my lady . . . but on what terms? It is no good hammering your sword into a plowshare if you must forge it again on the morrow." Her face falls slack again, not boredom, not hatred, not anything she cares to defile her finger by putting it on. Men and their metaphors.

"What did Torrhen and my Eddard die for, if I am to return to Karhold with nothing but their bones?" Richard Karstark asks and Thea can't understand why men must die for reasons. _Back in the islands if I died it would not have to be for great glory or honor or purpose. But I am not on the island and you will never be and I shall never be you. _

"Gregor Clegane laid waste to my fields, slaughtered my smallfolk, and left Stone Hedge a smoking ruin. Am I now to bend the knee to the ones who sent him? What have we fought for, if we are to put all back as it was before?" declares Lord Bracken, and she can see from his point of view, in a way. _I see an arrow flying, flying away from the world and right through anyone's in its path. _She raises her hand to reach it under her hood, rubbing her eye thoroughly.

Again, just as she's taking her hand away from her now-raw eye, Marq Piper makes his standing clear. "Whatever you may decide for yourselves, I shall never call a Lannister my king," his voice ricochets, and she almost, _almost, _grins long and sizzling, like the sword on the table (the sword both on the focused, settled, eyes of Robb and the worried, pondering eyes of Lady Stark, _and me, too. I was here. They will all remember because now there is no going back. Has there ever been? _She cannot ask and does not mourn it.)

The powerful Greatjon breaks the room's atmosphere in half with a lunge in that nearly makes her jump in her seat. "My LORDS!" he yells. And even though it's their war now, she's along with it, too, it's her life and blood and allegiance, is it not? So she listens with the face of one who belongs, even though she really doesn't, even if she should. "Here is what I say to these two kings!" She is not surprised and half-amused when he spits to the ground. " Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the wolfswood or the barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are wrong. The Others take the Lannisters too, I've had a bellyful of them." _I cannot find a thing to disagree with, _she thinks in awe, _I really cannot. Am I decisive or floating? "_Why shouldn't we rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are all dead!"he proclaims with enough force to wipe all expressions but shock off of her face as he points his sword to Robb, and the gesture, she knows how these men work, it's respect and more that points his weapon of conquest and honor in Robb's face. "There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to, m'lords," he says and her mouth cracks open. _Of course…Thea. You fool. Did you not see this? _She barely realizes she's thinking until a small smile of realization melts over her face. She almost laughs for what seems like the thousandth time she has not been able to count. The Greatjon kneels and places his sword at Robb's feet before the watching eyes of the whole room. "The King in the North!"

She wonders what would happen if someone _disagreed, _someone pledged for Renly or Stannis or _Joffrey _and _what if, there are no ends to what can happen here- _

But Lord Karstark follows, saying "I'll have peace on those terms," as he places down his sword as well. "They can keep their red castle and their iron chair." And again, the words she'd thought were fit for old Maester Luwin's history texts. "The King in the North!" _what's next? A Targaryen king? _ She thinks breathlessly, then, _I am at the right hand of the King. Not the boy with bloodlust or the younger brother with a court of flowers or Stannis from the middle of a kingdom of nothing. _It feels like-

A whole room of courts and houses laying allegiance, houses she's never heard of, houses that have not spoken, all claiming Robb- no, not Robb anymore, Lord Stark, that is what he was to her, and now King Robb, King in the North- the only one who does not kneel ,who does not have to prove, she supposes, is Lady Catelyn- _Queen Catelyn. Dowager Queen in the North?, _she thinks and the broken grin snaps over her face and she kneels to him. "The King in the North," she does not shout like a glimmering knight but he must hear her, and so does she.

_Was this meant to be? _There has to be a reason for all this.

She rises with the rest of the rousing crowd, her blood livid and reeling, with the new shift, with the alcohol in her system, with a liveliness that's too acidic for such a gentle word, and she can see, _she can see, _they had been on this path for so long already, hadn't they?

And there is no end she sees, and in that moment, it doesn't matter.

_Xx_

That night, in the tent, she untangles her hair, pulling at it so hard she grits her teeth. She had never had the sweet, golden hands of a proper maid; hers were cold and bony, but they did the trick. Maybe once it's all over, Robb can hold court and she can be in some position that other ladies will secretly envy amidst their proper scorn, and she can bring back hunter's bounty with gold in her hair and all the wolves or lions or stags or roses or fish (or krakens) will momentarily smile along with her, and she will be no queen, of course, but she doesn't want the kingdom, she'll not have to want, none of them will.

"_Ohh," Sansa had involuntarily cried in pain as Thea had arranged her hair. Jeyne had examined the style appreciatively. She didn't mind when Thea pulled too tight, not the way Sansa did. Thea had always been more than rough around her edges. _

"_It's how the ladies on the islands wore it," she said, at least, that was how she remembered it, with some extras added on. It wasn't elaborate, and strands of hair were hanging free and frayed, but Thea thought it looked nice. It was like ropes all around the back in some loose knot sort of style that she couldn't exactly get the hang of it. She couldn't remember how her mother had worn her hair, and Asha had never styled hers, so she recalled other ladies. That night she'd tried to do the same but she couldn't, and did the northern braids. Those were easier. She looked better in them anyway. Lady Stark had first taught her how, her hands warm against her scalp, in the early days. She'd been young and stupid and didn't know when to stop looking for answers and she'd asked if she looked like a northern lady; back then the north had been terrifying and new and unexplored the way an adventurer in a song looks at enchanted forests he's stumbled into. Lady Stark had told her she looked nice. _

She's so busy in her solitude, focusing on herself, so that she doesn't need to focus on anyone or anything else, as usual, that she barely notices the cloth of the tent separating, and Lady Stark stepping in. She snaps around, startled, but her face softens somewhat at the appearance of Lady Stark. "Good evening, my lady," she grins. "I…" and she feels a cross between giddy and out of place and awkward, but Lady Stark's face does not hold viciousness. She would know. But what she doesn't know is what to say…_would she expect me to see her as a queen? No…she knows that we're always going to be the same to each other. Even if there aren't words for it. _"I presume you are feeling as well as I am…?"

A quick, courteous smile darts over Lady Stark's face. "Yes, Thea," she says, her voice tired. _Maybe it's hard having to be the mother of a king, _ she wonders. _Or maybe just a mother in general. _"That was not what I came to speak to you about…" her voice lowers as she looks to either side, carrying along her cloak as she walks into the tent, closing the folds of the cloth. Thea stares blankly, feeling as if she's misplaced the contents of her whole mind. Lady Stark's gaze rests momentarily on a spot behind Thea's head, but her sharp eyes bore right back. Thea supposes Lady Stark won't waste time with indirect small talk. "You've known the words of our house, Thea. 'Winter is coming.'" Thea nods wordlessly, wondering if this is some test. "Well. After tonight…whatever you do," her voice hardens, though in her eyes, Thea can see the mother wolf (viciously protective. She's never heard anything about a mother kraken.) and Lady Stark says, "you are not back safe in Winterfell." Is she what's called a summer child? She's never thought about it before. "Winter truly is coming for all of us, Thea. Even you." Thea's lips separate, but whatever she was going to say vanishes from her mind and mouth (along with whatever left that resembled a smile) as Lady Stark's mouth relaxes, despite the conviction in her face.

"Soon," it's not even a question and she instantly feels inexcusably stupid, but Lady Catelyn just lowers her eyes.

"No, Thea," she says almost sympathetically. "Already."

"Well," Thea forces a crooked grin onto her face after a long moment of silence. "My lady, I think that if the winter should come, it would be a great winter. All of us." She wonders if it's improper to include herself, but where else would she be?

Catelyn's face almost falls. "It is winter, Thea. It is great in its mercilessness. Life is not a song, no matter what you may choose to sing of." She is silent then, for a moment, the soft strands of her furs pressed against her smooth face. They look so warm against her that Thea shivers lightly, the bones in her shoulders grinding down.

"I'll be cautious. You won't need to worry for me," she wryly says, trying to salvage the mood, or at least make a new one, or do _something. _She doesn't expect Lady Stark to pet her hair or tell her she can cry with fear for the Lannisters mounting her head or that new King Robb will protect her and make them all living like the world is made of gold. She's ironborn, now, isn't she? She can live with a little deathly surroundings. They're at war, aren't they? And wolves and lions can bite but girls made of iron don't fear being torn apart.

And maybe they don't listen to little iron songs about perfect wars, either.

Lady Stark shakes her head, not disapproving. "You will understand," she tells her, frowning slightly. "Your arrows and feathers can bring death, but that is all, Thea. There are stronger factors at play in this world." Words catch in Thea's throat, indignant words she'd never say here, but it's not as if Lady Stark thinks she's too weak to live in this war, right? Not weak. Her voice is meant to warn, not to patronize. She knows who wars aren't fought by- and she's never been within the definitions of anything.

"I understand," Thea earnestly insists, putting a hand to her collarbone and giving Lady Stark a winning smile. She looks away, down, and the air in the tent is stifled and cold and she should not be half clothed in front of Lady Stark and her stomach wouldn't be rolling if she hadn't drunk so much ale and if she dies because of this war maybe she'll be a wolf but if she lives she'll never really know. Her voice almost cracks. "I _do_." She looks back to Lady Stark. "I know you will be safe with King Robb, tonight. I congratulate you…" Is that something a summer child would say? She thinks helplessly and hatefully.

"Oh, Thea," Lady Stark tells her as if there are thousands of things she could say and still Thea wouldn't know anything, and Thea immediately knows that there is no reason for her, at least in Lady Stark's eyes, to give congratulations.

"Rest well," Lady Stark says, and she returns some murmured response of the same sentiment, watching her exit the small tent and still looking at the flap once she's gone.

And _that_ night her mind sings no songs, and she sleeps as well as she possibly can with her bow and arrows by her side, and she wonders how she'll manage to get any poison thoughts out of her head so she can sleep, but the sleep takes her quickly and softly as it should, as everything may or would take her if she had her way, and by the time she wakes up she forgets the moments before her eyes had finally shut (_how will this be remembered? Will I be forgotten? Will I be gilded and bright or will I be faded?_) , as always.

_Xx_

It's not so bad, not as bad as Lady Catelyn would have had her suspect. In fact, if she's going to be honest, she had no idea what to expect (she'd never lived with a king before. Her father doesn't count. And really, her father had never been a true king. The days of iron kings are before her.)

No, if she's going to be honest, (and she's a bad liar, isn't she? That's why her tongue is a sharp, cruel knife, because what else can it be?), having had no real expectations (yes, there were vague, _oh no what if _scenarios magnified by Lady Stark's warnings of hordes of Lannister men loosing lions on them all so they would die bloodied and screaming and unrecognizable and crownless, and vaguer _just like the songs, the _good _songs _scenarios that were even more unbelievable, silver and not gray, gilded and sweet and glorious and pleasurable with salt and wine and halfhearted lighthearted curses on her lips and fine silks stretched over her body and they all bow, they all do, every one of them, and there is no fighting but there's something better.) she came out fine. And it's tense and it's a kingdom, small and all to their own. Really, it is. Not hers, of course, sometimes she screeches at insolent visitors gladly to kneel to their king (and she smirks when they do, because they _do,_ and she may just be her, and they may do it for _their king ,_but they do it), but never _our _king, and when they are without an audience only then does she say _my king_ because the audiences usually choose (they must choose, unless they just don't acknowledge her presence and are used to not seeing her sort) to ignore her, and he's hers, someone is hers, someone is. One day, probably one very soon, she can tell, they will write songs of the Young Wolf and his pack of Starks and she is not one but it will be _her _song, and they can add whatever they will to it, they can say the Starks can turn into wolves because it's a song and history remembers differently, but she'll know, and she knows life may not be exactly a song, but _almost_ and that means enough.

Lady Stark has not commanded her to call her "dowager queen," or anything of the sort; she is still Lady Stark ,and Thea is still her ward, for better or worse (and there have been more pressing things on Lady Stark's mind than scolding her for speaking too loudly of moon tea and the like.). Robb does not demand she call him "your grace" at every waking moment, but he is no longer Lord Robb, and the Robb he had been even before is still under the waters of the past, he needs a new self now, and she does not confide in him for this, for she is no king, but she knows what a self is.

She's still a lady. Lady Thea of House Greyjoy. Lady Thea in the North, subject of King Robb, daughter of Lord (not king, he marked her the day he wanted that, he marked her and she cannot do a thing) Balon of the Iron Islands. They do not sing of her, they barely notice her. But the world does not look to them the way they _will. _She can wait for the world. She may not even need the whole world if – no, when, she tells herself, - when Robb wins this ugly war, and the Lannister queen and her golden garish son with the laughable names step aside, and then she'll get – well, something, whatever comes with the court of a king.

Lady Stark, a woman she may be, must stop this worrying, Thea thinks. It's not going to make anything any better. _But she's so graceful about it as if she was made to do this. A real diplomat, a wolf with claws that do not cut everything, but the curving teeth of the past's legends. _

_Oh shut up Thea, you ghastly mess. The wolves aren't a different species from you. Neither, like it or not, are the women of this earth. Lady Stark doesn't even worry that much, at least openly. _

_Just don't think about it. The more you do, the less it will make sense and it all makes perfect sense. When you overthink it, the red and gold men who would run you through quick and thoughtless as if you were nothing to kill Robb win, when you overthink it the men who guided you from Pyke years ago as if you were chattel win, when you overthink it the visitors who don't kneel when you command them to win, when you overthink you lose. _So she smiles. She never loses. Why should she? She is no pawn in this king's war, not when only one king knows of her existence.

In his throne room (not Wintefell, they will make a better one when they relocate back to their home, she supposes. None of them truly live here, so it's less odd for her as a whole. Not that she'd ever say so aloud.) some shiver and some look as out of place as gold on silver, white on black. But she stands in its emptiness, and feels as if maybe she does not fill it, but she almost fits in her surefooted stance, arms crossed around her chest elegantly, dressed in blackest velvets and furs and arranged hair.

"Thea," Robb's voice calls her back. He still calls her that as if they're children pretending that dragons still roam the skies and that if you really want to claim to be king it doesn't matter what you are, a game with no consequences, like a song. He_ still_ calls her that. She shakes her head slightly, and small strands of wispy black hair fall out of place and over her shoulders and her mouth breaks open into a cracked smile. The time for her to point it out had long ago passed.

"Oh. Your Grace," she says, her voice and smile and eyes completely flat. When she's calm and restful she isn't so wild, really, inactive iron doesn't do much harm. She smiles at him dryly, wondering how it feels to be called that. It's not the Iron Throne, but it's incomparable, almost. He adjusts the crown on his head, nearly wincing at its weight. (One time when they were small they pretended they were the Khal and Khaleesi of the horselords and Winterfell was their Khalasar She'd found a servant's kitchen knife and pretended it was a sword and she'd tried to braid bells into his short hair but they tumbled out singing and she'd laughed and they'd said _blood of my blood_ within their game and half-knew it. Funny, wasn't it? Now he is a real king.) _It's only metal, _a part of her thinks, but not with too much judgment.

"You need not call me that," not now, he frowns contemplatively and she can only imagine all the things on his mind, starting with that weighty crown, but he can handle it, he's already put it on and isn't that half the battle? He's said this before, she doesn't _need_ to, as if it's not a necessary part of him. He knows who he is, she figures, and she must sounds forced to him. Not like a subject and advisor. Even though that's the closest thing to what she is. Or would be.

"All right, _Your Grace," _she laughs again and he doesn't. it's been a very long while since she's seen him laugh and it might be just her memory but she wracks her brain and she can't remember. Except for Grey Wind, _he_ makes Robb smile. It couldn't have been _too _long ago, but knowing Robb…she knows him better than these armored northmen, she knows better than to send him into a war while making deals he can't hope to keep track or control of. _They laugh when I speak to you and they scowl when I speak over them and when I don't call you Your Grace it's as if I shouldn't even be there. But I deserve it. I've earned it for ten years and we are each other's and I won't watch the southron gilded Lannister boy and his old queen take your head the way they took your father's. I'm no man but if you cannot be the Robb that used to be when you are with me then you should at least accept that I'll act like myself around you. _But she doesn't say that. She's not pathetic enough to make such a fool out of herself. And so as his face opens in expectation she stops laughing slowly, smiling bitterly. "It isn't that funny, is it," she thinks aloud, no question, but the truth. "This isn't fucking funny."

Robb's eyes lower (he's never been as sharp tongued as she has, but she can tell as soon as he doesn't look back up immediately that isn't it) and his voice hardens so cold she can tell this is not Robb or Lord Stark or even the New King Robb, this is the voice of the King In the North and her eyes widen and freeze as he says, "Thea. I need your assistance…the north does-" he cuts himself off when she looks at him tiredly, but his voice does not change, and a part of him wonders just for one second if it ever can again and then for one second more if it was just her listening wrong all this time. And he moves closer so that there's some sort of not-so-feigned _personal_ aspect to them, as if they're not a king and subject or a mummery of it. He keeps saying her name as if they need to remember who they are when they're around each other. Or remember who they're not. _She is no fool woman. _"You will go to the Iron Islands," it's a command and they both know but it comes as a fortelling, less forceful than it should be for a king. Maybe it's because she's almost his advisor. She can't be his hand, she can't be his mother. She's not his whore or regent. She's just Thea, isn't she?_ The Iron Islands. Back where I came from…_her mouth opens.

"Why?" _he's exiling me! He's listened to those men and he thinks I'm faithful to the ironmen above him and he thinks I'll harm him, and he doesn't want me to know! Or he's sending me away because he hears them but doesn't believe them and they're after me. _But those thoughts are like winds, untouchable, and they're forgotten within the next moment, amidst the shock and confusion. When was the last time she said the phrase "The Iron Islands" aloud? She cocks her head, waiting for an answer. "Robb, what's going-" she doesn't worry, but she suspects. She always does. _He won't want me to hide there like some princess in a story, will he? It isn't any haven there and if he thinks he'll send away the boys and his mother and me so we won't be ravaged bloody by some lion-men I'll have him know- _

He stops, looking straight into her eyes and his seriousness almost reminds him not of Eddard Stark, but of the readiness and grounded stability of his mother. "In exchange for support, I am going to give your father a crown." He reaches into his pocket, reaching for a piece of paper and she's dead silent as the parchment scrapes out and it's as if she's just been told there are dragons flying above the North.

A crown.

_A crown? But he can't have that. He's the Lord of Pyke and King Joffrey is the son of King Robert and Robb is the King in the North and he tried to take it but he's too ironborn, he didn't know the world isn't all made of iron and ocean. _

_Oh, relax, now. If you can't handle a visit back home to speak with Father then he was right about you. What had he said? Oh, I must have said something stupid like I didn't think all the men should go off to war or – "you sent them to die, you sent my brothers away." Was I a dumb little girl. Good thing, in a way, I had to leave then. I was not suited to there but now I am. I am made of iron, not soft flesh and lace and curtsies. Iron, and I can handle this. I am the only person who can. Robb should be proud to have me as…whatever I am to him now. He is like a brother to me, but not quite. _

"You do not want the Iron Islands?" is all she can think to say. Maybe he does not want to waste forces on the ironmen when he already has the Iron Throne. So much iron, so many names.

"If I am the King in the North, then he can have the Iron Islands," he rationalizes, his voice just and convicted. If that's what a king is meant to sound like, he does it well. If not, she supposes she's never really cared what a king is meant to sound like. _And I'll be the messenger and mediator of the king, and I'll be the daughter of a king. An iron bridge. Seven hells, I'll- be a princess._

She blinks a few moments, wondering if she's gone mad but if she has, it would have been long before this. "And what have your men said?" she demands.

He looks to her, shaking his head, almost smiling. Almost. "I do not need other me to tell me every move to make, Thea. You of all people should know that."

Almost normal. She grins this time, and it isn't forced or cruel, as it has been as of late. "And I do, Robb." She reaches for the letter in his hand and even as her fingers move for it he still moves his closer to give it to her. He hesitates and she's not sure why, so she tilts her head.

"I must ask you something," he says after a long moment, after she's gone and taken the paper and begun skimming it. _I know what is needed, I can scour it as I probably must later. My father does not require me to read to him, after all. _He takes her hand and does not let go, takes her hand the way a king takes a knight's, or maybe, she'll never know but it seems so, it seems like that and a thousand things she can't understand. If she had a thousand hands she could know but she just has her own and somehow that's never enough. "Am I your brother, now and always?"

_Almost. But you weren't asking exactly. That is how it works, is it not? For a king. Or for me. Now and always, you ask me. Now is certain, now is true, now I cannot forget. And always…I would do anything those men would do for you, and what your mother would do. If I could I would thrust myself into battle and slay every enemy and drench myself in their filthy heated red blood. I am iron. And the world is an imitation that forgets itself. You took back the North but if anyone takes it away then now I can take it back from them. _She supposes if there ever was a time it was now, although she's so patient she can handle a wait, but she can prepare herself, but that doesn't matter right now.

"Now and always," she doesn't even think about it. Of course he's not her brother. "Until I am dead, my loyalty is yours." And for a moment her voice instead of her insides goes to iron and she almost doesn't recognize herself, but it's time for this side to waken, isn't it? And she's still taking his hand and he's said nothing and she has no idea what else to say, she wasn't ready for a sweeping songlike life- no, she's fine. She doesn't look away. It's too late to even think about that. Ten years. "And that is a very long time, I should say." A faint smile crosses her face, and a part of her registers the slight, cold concern on Robb's. _They never come back, Rickon had said, perhaps a bit too loud, but Rickon thinks he's a wolf. I shall come back to them an iron-and-salt princess at the court of the king and when this war is done _we_ can decide who can and can't come back._ She's always been fond of the sea…"Your court will be in need of me," she is part serious. "It will be nice to see…the islands." It would not be the greatest idea to say _home. _Not now. "One day you should come. The green men aren't fit to _live _there, but even _you _would be able to appreciate what it has." Almost like they used to be, the wild almost-lady and the north boy. But she is a princess and he is a king and used to is nothing. _This is the future. And it is mine. _"All can. Although I'm not about to bring home ships and ships full of greenlanders to my father…" she grins. "There is room in this world for two kings, though. It…will be exciting." She tells herself to remember who she is and isn't, she tells herself who she will be, who she must be (she tells him silently that she isn't Ned Stark who jumped into a trap, she isn't a fragile girl in the Iron Throne's jaws like Sansa, she isn't Arya who pushes and pushes and falls through. She is Thea of House Greyjoy and she is going to rise just as strong as he can. Although not as high, but she never expected or wanted _power. _What does that even mean?)

"I'm sure it will be, Thea," his eyes do not smile as his mouth does. That's what he's worried about. _You really are your father's son, _she thinks but when his face almost warms she realizes she's really said it aloud.

_I wonder if I've become my father's daughter. I'm certainly not like my mother. Am I like anyone?_

"Now and always," she repeats again, her voice hardened and almost joyful as she grasps the letter so tightly the parchment _cracks_. "I hope this won't take too long…" she tells him. "Won't it be bothersome if I come all the way back just to be caught up in all my family's troubles?" her grin is off its hinges. "When I come back you'll hardly believe what I tell you."

"When you come back you'll hardly believe what _I_ have to tell to _you," _he grumbled but it's in the best nature he has and his crown is crooked on his head and it must be heavy and she can feel the twists in her stomach again, and she doesn't know why, so she just laughs. That's what she does. He knows, doesn't he.

Her world is hardening and she will with it and there will be songs of the wolves and lions and stags but she knows the words.


	2. Chapter 2

The night before leaving she spends the time alone in bed, vacantly staring into the pitch-black room, unable to sleep for the longest time, unable to feel anything except vaguely awake to the point where she doesn't even notice. It's _cold _and dry inside, she recalls how odd the air had felt here, although she cannot remember the alternative. Not that she's trying. Never try too hard. That's what so many people seem to forget.

She dreams of walking across the sea on a bridge made of stones and the sea rages over the rock but she can still see underneath. Every few moments she looks back, but nothing changes, although the further she moves the further the oceans seems to stretch. It's not blue and green and sparkling like in stories, it's thick and coldly shining and so gray it's almost black. It's encompassing and undeniable. There are faces, though, at its surface, beautiful and soft and smiling cunningly, gently. Mermaids, salt ladies of Pyke. They rise as she stops, and they laugh, and they sing, and she is their future queen. Their hands are adorned so ornately with shells and sea stones and glass, but when she is the queen, she will have gold and be more radiant then all the sea wenches put together.

Their salty hands are cold and she draws hers away, walking further and further to the chorus of their voices and when she wakes up she does not remember their song.

_Xx_

The ship seems like it has been immersed in the middle of gray rolling infinity for days and days but that cannot be true. She hasn't asked how long it's been, she does not want to appear desperate or nervous or impatient- she's going back to her home, really. Her _home_ she's been away from for so long so she can act as a messenger, a negotiator, act like Lady Stark almost- they might not want to hear that. It's not as if she wants to be them, not when she's already the princess of the islands. All right, not yet, she isn't. But she may as well be and that's- she'd never dreamed it. Not even when she was small and still thought life could be like her games with Asha.

A large wave of water slams up against the side of the ship (does the side have a certain name? She's got no idea about ships, having lived half her life on land. Maybe when she gets back she'll learn all about them and all the islands will look on her with pride.) She raises the hood of her cloak over her hair (it looks atrocious with the sea spray, but she doesn't mind yet, when she gets back- _home- _she can fix it well, with handmaids to help her, and the court to surround her and a crown to put on her.)

And when she rubs the salty spray from her eyes- they're reddening, they are, but in the best way, and she doesn't recall how the air that now feels thick and harsh and lustrously rough used to feel, but she opens her eyes again and in the distance there's the black-and-gray-and-white stone halls she used to call her own (used to think she'd own alongside her sister, used to long to return to. She supposes they're as she remembers, she thinks. Maybe a little smaller, but what wouldn't look smaller when you come from the house of a king? No. Her father will be a king too.)

It's jagged and rough and all she remembers is still there, but more weathered, and for ironborn, that just means it is being made stronger. It's strange, unlike Winterfell, it's a different kind of natural. But then again that was the green world. She's not even sure what to think of it so she looks up, up to the sky, gray in some areas with the dankness of the islands and red all around the comet, the beautiful radiant comet- _for me, _she thinks, but obviously it's not true. _After all this there will be no comets pushed onto my lap. I'd have to fight all of space for a tenth of that, _a part of her says but the princess in her grins and crosses her arms and watches the red bleed out over the sky, luxuriant and almost spiritual, not that she's that sort, but she hears them. Some say it's for the dragons coming back, some say it's the end of the world, some say it's for the Red God. Men's words are nothing, though, not when they contradict each other and not when they rush in all the same direction mindlessly. And if they cannot claim this comet they cannot take it from her. _Light my way home, red and bright and heated, _she bids it, feeling the paper of the letter in her cloak, close against her like a sheathed knife, that she can draw out and use for all her needs. _It swerves across the sky, giving me a path. _A red, jagged, smeared path, like velvet dye, tearing the sky open.

A stark contrast to her old- new- true- ironborn home. The castle is no palace of regal opulence, it's hard, like her father said once. Hard places breed hard men, hard like iron Balon, hard like cold Lord Stark. She'll harden if needed but she knows she's just the way she is and they'll love her for it. They'll welcome her, they'll know she is no soft weak fragile greenlander prisoner wench. She's thinking about it, coming home in the gray light and red shadow, when the captain breaks the illusion. "My lady," he asks her. "Shall we make for port now?"

"That would be fine," she licks her teeth. _After all, one day it should be mine. Fine, rhymes with mine…_she grins as the salt sprinkles over her face. _Am I iron now, forged and aquatic? _She wonders if her sister feels like this, her iron captain sister, Asha, with the ship of men who see her as a leader rather than a woman. Except Asha would know everything about the ships and sails and oceans and geography…well, no need for that now. Thea's coming home and it isn't her job to be tested on technical knowledge. She squints her eyes to see better, but there's only so much that she can see of the islands. She wonders if she'd remember how to work her way around them. _I am no visiting greenlander. I know these islands, the salt in my blood is the sea. _Over her shoulder she spies the captain's daughter; she can't tell if the girl (she can't remember this wench's name, but she won't need to) is staring at her or not- if she has, it hasn't been the first time. _She must envy my fortune. I am sure every lady on this island would….or my sister. I hear she's built some sort of name for herself. _

As the island grows larger, approaches, it is a deeper, harsher gray with each moment. The gritty texture almost forces itself onto her hands. But the islands are always like that…back in Winterfell, though the Starks had never been so crass, other people, when referring to the Iron Islands, had never described it flatteringly. _Damp clusters of rock inhabited by drunken fishermen and scarred-faced whores, each sight grayer and coarser than the next. _Well, it is not as cold as Winterfell, without the ominous anxiety held by most of the people, constantly awaiting winter or something even worse. The ironborn are fearless.

Thea has nothing to fear. The way the ocean rolls beneath her, the way the ship bears on, it's almost familiar. _I should stay by the sea, should I not? It is not as terrible as people say. It is where I am from, how could it deny me? _Even the air feels unusual, and moist and overbearing, but pleasant in its own way. _Even my father shall have to accept that this is my true place now._ But if that's true, then she must be the only one to know.

She doesn't like it, though, hates the sight of no one waiting for her. After all these years, she had used to have vague wonderings of what it would be like to return. And now- she strains her eyes until her vision flickers but she still sees no one waiting for her- she can't remember what exactly she'd expected.

She doesn't hate the sign of the wolf, but the fact that it's nowhere in sight, least of all above the sigil of the kraken that seems to cast a shadow over the whole of Pyke, does not weaken her confidence at all.

The buildings look new, and even the temples are unrecognizable. True, she's never paid much mind to the Seven (Septa Mordane had entirely given up on taming her) and the faith of the Drowned God is one that she has not been immersed in for half a lifetime. It's understandable.

If there is someone out there then they must be watching for her. Even the comet must see her, red and blisteringly bright, the color of power and pain and love, it knows her, if it's so important it must know everyone. She turns sharply away from her post at the side of the ship and walks her way down further and further around the boat, furiously swallowing down the sharp, ill taste working its way through her twisted-shut mouth. _One day they'll all surround me. _Her hand, almost by in its own accord, shoves its way into her pocket to stroke the letter. _They'll see. _

But they don't, and she glares away from the sailors- as they must be watching her- as she gazes like a hunter for dragons, searching relentlessly for one of her father's bannermen or _someone _who would know her, but all she can recognize is fishermen calling out for profit and children playing in the dirt and sailors shouting in foreign tongues and she leans forward over the rails to watch as a group finally walks ahead- they're merchants, of course. The ship has brought her along with their bounty as if to sell her. "We come from Oldtown," the captain calls as he rattles off a boring list of foreign goods and she raises her eyebrows to scrutinize the small crowd. "And we have your heiress." There's no response, she can gather, but she sees a man turn to one of his companions and murmur something while reaching into his pouch. _You fools give more thought to haggling over some dampened Myrish squares of cloth than to me, _she thinks with a bitterness that makes her hands grip the rail so tight that she does not notice the captain staring at her. She swings her head to the side, only half trying to compress the rage flowing through her. "Have your men bring my things down," she commands, paying him and striding away without a word to the rest of the filthy ship. The one thing she's thankful for is that none of them hinder her as she leaves, not the captain or his rough men or dull daughter.

On the gangplank she still can see out, she's not lost. How could she be? This isn't the middle of the ocean with nothing but seaweed and a sailor's myth to guide her along. These are the Iron Islands, her rightful home. "Innkeeper," she demands as soon as she recognizes the man, looking older than ever. "I require a horse." He looks right back to her as blank as the merchants who wouldn't have known her if she'd stood there all day, without even bowing. _I really am back in the Iron Islands. _From what she can remember, they'd always had a different view of law and honor than in the north, and she supposes now is not the time to tell him to bend the knee to his heir.

"As you say, m'lady. Happens as I have might one do," he tells her. "Where would you be riding, m'lady?" _You watched the captain say I was the heir of these islands and you still do not know me._

"Pyke," she sighs, wondering what it would take for these dull ironmen to pick up on it. She should have dressed differently, she supposes, in gold and black, the cloak with the embroidered kraken, then maybe someone would have guessed or at least cared.

"You'll want to be off soon to get to Pyke before dark. My boy can show you the way-" _I remember the way, old man, and do not need some boy to guide me through the dark paths of my own home, _she wants to say, but the thoughts trap in her mind and anyway, another man comes, one with a deep voice and mysterious way about him. She warily observes this man, long of hair and towering tall, as he tells the innkeeper, "you will not need your boy. I can escort my niece back to her father's home."

In awe, she watches the smallfolk bow to her uncle, who she now recognizes – the last time she'd seen him she'd been a child and he'd been youthful and fiery, the youngest of her uncles. He's wearing strange ocean-toned robes, and covered in seaweed from his head to his feet, like he lives in the ocean. Such is the demeanor of a priest of the Drowned God…not that she knows many. "Uncle Aeron," she would not have recognized him, what with the massive beard streaming from his face.

"Niece Thea, your lord father bid me fetch you." _So he has acknowledged me. He could have at least came down instead of sending this priest to send me to him. My lord father indeed. _

"Just one moment, uncle," she sighs, turning to the captain of the ship. If he is so holy, he must have patience, at least a fraction of the patience she has. "My things," she tells the captain. One of the sailors walks down to her, carrying her thick bags in his arms. "You have my thanks," she blankly says, but by the time she turns back she notices her uncle far ahead of her. Gritting her teeth and inhaling shallowly she walks as fast as she can without running to catch up with him. By the time she reaches him she can hardly catch her breath, one of her braids is undone and they are nearly at the end of the pier. He barely acknowledges her. "Uncle," she wonders if his almost drowning had taken his mind when it gave him a new spirit, "I had not looked for you. After ten years I had assumed my lord father and lady mother would come themselves, or send an honor guard." Ten years. _Unless mother has become so mad that she cannot stand to be outside._

"It is not for you to question the commands of the Lord Reaper of Pyke," he barely even looks at her as he says it. Aeron now is nothing like the man she had once known. _I was not questioning him. What is for me? _She bitterly considers asking; it doesn't seem as if he'll like anything she has to say anyway. He pays more mind to the horse as he approaches it, and asks of her-"tell me true, niece. Do you pray to the northern wolf gods?"

Tell it true. Fine, she can almost do that. It's not much of an idea to tell her uncle and a priest she can't remember the last time she knelt to pray, but she never prayed to the Winterfell gods. "Eddard Stark…" even saying his name is strange. "He prayed to a tree." The Starks would resent that remark, she knows, and she almost resents herself for continuing to think of them as if they're beside her. She hadn't _minded_ that they prayed to trees. "I do not care for his gods."

"Good. Kneel," he says automatically, to her shock. _I have always knelt, _she wants to tell him, but he would never understand. She wonders if the sea is the only thing he can understand now.

"Uncle-" she stares at the wet, filthy ground, covered in rocks and thick mud.

"You will kneel, unless the green lands have turned you vain and soft." _They have not. They have taught me the value of pride, _she would have said under different circumstances, but her uncle is a powerful and important man here, and she will have to be able to let him reach her if she cannot reach him. So she kneels, carefully, grateful that her clothes are dark. "Bow your head," he tells her, and she does, and she _knows _she's ironborn but this is official, it's ceremonial, an experience she's never had- and she's not sure what to feel but she knows it's honor when the frigid, burning water runs over her head, drenches her back and cleanses her neck and soaks her eyes (she almost shrieks, but _almost.) _and kisses her. "Let Thea your servant be born again from the sea as you were. Bless her with salt, bless her with stone, bless her with steel." She floats. "Niece, do you know the words still?"

"What is dead may never die," if the words ever died in her mind then maybe, right now, it never mattered.

"What is dead may never die," says her uncle, says the sea, "but rises again harder and stronger." He commands her, "stand," and she silently rises, blinking the salt away and forcing back shivers as she silently mounts her horse, following after her uncle, and he is even more silent, but surrounding him is the cavernous roaring of the ocean. The horses make an even pace, dragging through the gray mud of the island.

But something about his silence unnerves her, even more than his words. "I have been half my life away from home," she tries to ask, wondering if any of the man is left in him, or if the sea has taken over completely. "Will I find the islands changed?" _They are drearier than I remember. _Perhaps she remembers wrong. Perhaps her memory is just another old, breaking construction.

He does not turn back, only tightens his grip on the reins of his horse. "Men fish the sea, dig the earth, and die. Women birth children in blood and pain, and die. The winds and tides remain. The islands are as our gods made them." _What a grim view, _her mouth twitches.

"Will my sister and lady mother be at Pyke?" she changes the subject, certain he will not reduce her mother and Asha to ghastly metaphors. They will be better company than him, she is sure, they will welcome her warmly. Even her mother, mad as she is.

"You will not," and she does not react. "Your mother dwells on Harlaw, with her sister. It is less raw there and she is troubled by her worsening cough." She isn't sure what to feel. "And your sister has taken _Black Wind_ to Great Wyk with messages for your father. You may be sure of her return." _My sister the ship captain…_oh, she'd heard tell of Asha. Maybe Asha has heard stories of the Young Wolf and his freakish but majestic beast ,Grey Wind.

"Stark is grey and Greyjoy's black. But it seems we both are of the wind," she smiles to herself. _Strange. By the names I would be gray. But that's the Starks and their winter. _It may be a stretch in both the wrong directions, but that's the air for you, and neither krakens nor wolves come from the air. "And what of you, uncle?" she amends what could be a mistake (but maybe all her words are to him.) "You were no priest when I lived in Pyke. I remember you singing reaving songs while standing on tables with a horn of ale in your hand." The ironborn are rough, but she remembers, they love the songs, the tales of their past. Always singing of the past.

"Young I was, and vain," he says in a tone that suggests he thinks she's no better, "but the sea washed away my follies and vanities. Niece, the man you knew drowned, and seawater filled his lungs and the fish ate the scales off his eyes. But when I rose again, I saw clearly." She's speechless for a moment- and she supposes it's clear she liked the old Aeron better. _He's gone mad. _

"Uncle…why has my father called off his swords and sails?" _Please give me a true answer this time,_ she does not beg.

"Doubtless he will tell you at Pyke," he drones. _Wouldn't you say so! _

"I would like to know now," she grits her teeth and grips onto the reins so hard the leather cuts into her hand.

"From me, you shall not. We are commanded not to speak of this," he puts her down once more, and this isn't what she came for. She didn't come here to be placed aside by a priest. _These islands are as much mine as they are Asha's, I am my father's heir. Not you. _

"Even to _me!_" she spits, not even caring, because clearly she's already too much for him. She'd spent ten years away, during which she'd gone off to war, became a part of royal court, learned to use a bow and arrow better than most men she knew, and still he sees her as some common wench. "I must know of _my father's _plans. I am not just _anyone, _ uncle, I am not some foolish woman you must silence. And I am my father's heir…" at least, after Asha. A woman can inherit if there are no other men in line…and Rodrik and Maron are long dead."To the Iron Islands." She swallows what feels like sickness.

"We shall see," he ponders and it's as if he's slapped her off her horse into the rough, wet ground.

"Asha lives, though she is a woman. But I am as well, and if she has her rights…" she vows, "then so shall I. And I will not be cheated of them, I warn you." _Even the men of my own blood. Even they would do this to me. _

"You _warn _a servant of the Drowned God, woman? You have forgotten more than you have ever known. And you are a great fool if you believe your lord father would pass these islands over to a Stark the way they passed their unwanted silks and jewels to you. Now be silent, the ride is long enough without your endless magpie chatterings."She tries to keep silent, and it's hard, and she inhales sharply at every turn but there are too many thoughts twisting in her mind to let her speak anyway. Ten years in Winterfell and she becomes a Stark in the eyes of the Drowned God's servant. He cannot represent the whole islands…he cannot know that in Winterfell, she was safe, she didn't dislike it there- she was contented often, but she was a traitor's daughter, with less honor than Jon Snow; none of them would have known that she had spent her earlier years half terrified of Eddard Stark and his first impression of blood and ruin (and her other half in his shadow of trying to be an almost-father, then trying to be the law, whereas there were no words for what Lady Stark was, or her children. Not really. Lady Stark had never entirely trusted her and she isn't so sure if any of the other wolves had either, aside from Robb. He trusts her. And she trusts him. It's too bad.) She says none of that, though, Pyke is a land of the past, of reavers and wars that never truly end, and if she's a Stark then nothing she can say will fit. _I am a Greyjoy. An heir. _

And the horses travel higher over the steepening hills, barren and brown of thin grass, and strewn with dry rocks. An abandoned mill stands, the winds blowing through the craggy foundation, rocks crumbling away, gray and fading out. The grass turns so thin it's not even there and the hills turn, and the sea's scent caresses her face in its rough touch that should be so much more familiar, even as they go further away from the sea, always far, always too close. It makes her want to speak. "Robb Stark is Lord of Winterfell." She cannot call him her king here. "He has broken fealty with the iron throne. There's war." Maybe if there's any of the old Aeron in there he'll like that.

"The maester's ravens fly over salt as fast as rock. This news is old and cold," he says as if he barely even hears, and it's useless but she's angry.

"It means a new day, Uncle," she explains.

"Every morning brings a new day, much like the old." _Seven hells._

"In Riverrun they would tell you differently," she clenches her jaw, a true smile coming out. "They say the red comet heralds a new age. A messenger from the gods." She realizes he thinks there's only one god but what does it matter when the red watches her?

"A sign it is, but from our god, not theirs. A burning brand it is, as our people carried of old. It is the flame the Drowned God brought from the sea, and it proclaims a rising tide. It is time to hoist our sails and go forth into the world with fire and sword, as he did." _All right, old man, _she thinks.

"I could not agree more." She's not sure what exactly he means, maybe she isn't the only one in the world, but this cannot all be happening for nothing and if she's in the middle of it, why object?

"You are agreeing with a god as a raindrop agrees with a storm," he advises her. A raindrop she may be, but one day she'll be so much more. Maybe even the Queen of these old islands and wouldn't that be something! She grins, forcing the horse forward- it cries out but runs faster until her braids fly back in the wind and her old uncle is in the dust and the further she goes the closer she can tell she's getting.

As she gets closer, her eyes widen as she sees it at last and she rubs dirt from her watering eyes, frowning at the stinging, but when she dries them Aeron is there beside her as if she was never ahead of him. Everything washes up on these old islands and even the castle is old, old with the past's crop of battle marks from dead King Robert's weaponry coming down hard. The gray-black, long castle on the rocks stands over them. The gates are tall and hard and the tower in the distance stands thin and far (in her dreams she remembers waiting there in confusion in terror and she dreams of her mother's weeping and Asha's promising and the fire.) But the gates, though they stand, are her family's and do their bidding and she is restless as Aeron is still, and the gates welcome her in to her home.

There's no one there she knows but there are a throng of starved children and silent thralls and stablehands and she overlooks them silently, her eyes tilting and gleaming as they stare blankly at her- more at her than her uncle. "Will you stay the night, Uncle?" she invites, not surprised when he tells her he's off for _their god's business _and promptly turns around to leave.

Idly she stays on her horse, crossing her arms, when an old woman approaches her. She looks down expectantly, her eyebrows arched. The woman, unsure in posture, tells her, "m'lady, I am here to show you to your chambers." _Well, at least they know I am their lady._

"By whose bidding?" she inquires.

"Your lord father, m'lady," the old woman says, and Thea's eyes snap wider even though it's what's to be expected.

She inhales, trying to keep patient. " So you _do _know who I am," she presumptuously says. "And why has he not come down for me?" even if she doesn't know, Thea knows she's got every reason to ask. _Mine is a world of debt._

"M'lady, he awaits you in the sea tower, after you have been rested from your trip." _Only_ after_ I have been rested? Ned Stark, cold as winter as he was, would never have put me through this. _

She raises her chin higher. "Who would you be?"

"Helya, who keeps this castle for your lord father," the old woman apparently is. _Or so she says._

"_Sylas_ was steward here," the old drunk, she isn't sure if she's correcting this Helya or asking her what on earth has gone on since she was taken. "They called him sourmouth." _And you call me m'lady…because they have all forgotten my name? _

"Dead these five years, m'lady," gone with the tides, back to the sea.

"And what of Maester Qalen?" she remembers him, remembers them all, really.

"He sleeps in the sea." Was that what they called being dead? "Wendamyr keeps the ravens now." And Thea supposes there is nothing more for her to say- she knows the whereabouts of her father, she knows the faces and names have changed, but the gray sea still rolls on, and whether or not it recognizes her does not matter because she cannot tell for sure who will. _I am a stranger in my own home. Winterfell knows me better,_ she thinks sharply, involuntarily. Reeling, she shakes her head and forces a wide, cool smile.

"Show me to my chambers," she makes no eye contact with anyone as the old woman moves forward and she follows – _I am a lady of Pyke and I must follow my own subjects to find my way to home- _to the bridge, the old bridge by the Bloody Keep.

On their way over the bridge, the green-foamed waters rage beneath her. "Careful, m'lady," Helya warns her, and Thea wants to curse, but she clings to the horse, imagining how long it would take for her to fall asleep in the water, as the Bloody Keep looms closer and closer, until the doors are high above and in front of her. She glides her way in through the door, expecting _something_ and, it is dark, so dark she must squint her eyes and the dampness permeates her clothes. Suppressing a shiver- the air is disgustingly old in there- she sniffs around. It is not _bloody- _that would imply life had been in there recent enough to smell blood. She puts a hand to her hip, levelly gazing at Helya. _You may think yourself ironborn, hag, but you're just an old crone. I am out of the green lands, yes- but a lady of these islands and that is all the difference._ She is not afraid to sleep in chambers where thousand-year old ghosts of slain princes (the River King's sons, slain in their beds and sliced to bloody bits) were said to roam, but she knows if she will stay here, it must be fit to her. "I'll have a basin of hot water and a fire in this hearth," she begins, _this molded place could do with some heat._ "See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes." To say the least of what the rooms contained- when she looks to the bed she cringes at its rotted wood and infested mattress, and the decaying wall hangings. _Does my father think me a rotting corpse! _

"As you command, m'lady," Helya runs off, and Thea waits in the filthy chambers alone. _I wonder if I am missed in Robb's court,_ she thinks half facetiously.

A slam of a door snaps her to attention, pushing around the ancient air. She frowns as Helya enters with some thralls, carrying equipment for the rooms. "I shall bathe now, Helya," she informs them, as the thralls light the fires around the room, giving enough light to see and drive out some of the wet air, enough to showcase exactly how filthy it is.

At the bath, she stares down the thralls, or handmaids, or whatever they are to her now, as she strips down to clean herself. They look uncomfortable, unsure whether or not to meet her gaze. She laughs bitterly as the cold (seawater, she observes as it runs into her eyes from her forehead) water runs in sheets over her, washing off gray dust from the long travel, her hair shining black down her shoulders. It's too cold to handle for too long, so she rises, waving her hand at the thralls to dismiss them as she makes her way to her wardrobe. _I will not meet my father looking like a plain ward stuck in the background, _but with soft leather shoes, and a silver-grey gown with a black velvet bodice embroidered in gold thread- a kraken, strong and glimmering; a thin chain of gold running down her chest. Hurriedly, she rebraids her hair the way she remembered she had it when she left, across her head like a crown. _Like the Lannister queen's but not so false. _"I shall expect to return to a warm room and clean rushes…" she tells the thralls, rubbing her cold black-and-gold gloved hands and tossing back her hair out of the way.

She does not look back as she leaves the Bloody Keep and its ghosts, she does not look back as she walks over the hard stone bridge, or over the next two- she breathes rapidly, knowing she is walking almost too q uickly. And when she comes to the last bridge her stomach involuntarily lurches and she slaps her own hand to calm herself. It is a bridge made of ropes and old wood, so old no one remembers when it was built (from what she remembers) and it is above the wild waters, and the winds toss it like a writhing kraken from the old songs of heroes and monsters. She bites her lip – _you are acting like a stupid woman, _but then she thinks_ caution will keep you alive unlike the others- _remembering how she and Asha would run over this _thing. _It's so old, her father must love it, she thinks without a trace of bitterness.

Once over the bridge, she looks around. No one. Just the Great Keep staring her down. So she makes her way up to it, she is a kraken after all, surrounded by the sea- her kingdom, really, almost. Of course, the old, deteriorating door is as strong as it is damp, and when she pulls at it, she finds it's bolted and when she knocks on it with all the force- so they can never pretend they do not hear her- the splinters ravage her glove. She puts her hand behind her back, then; she will not come in rags.

Fortunately, it is only a moment she must wait before an armored guard asks her if she is Balon's daughter, Thea- _who else? _, she wants to snap. "You will learn who I am if you refuse me, and that is Lady Thea," she narrows her eyes and makes her way onward up the upward cycle of the staircase, lifting her skirts so that she does not trip and break her bones on the rock stairs, until she reaches the top.

She wasn't sure what to expect, but when she sees her father she knows she'd almost forgotten how old and thin he had been. Her eyes widen – he is like flint, like a stone, like a part of these hardened, condensed islands, wrapped in thick furs on his chair, furs that match his gray hair, almost as long as hers- how long had it been since he turned so old?- and his cold eyes. His eyes are enough to chill her- they recognize, she knows. But not with the love she had seen of Lord and Lady Stark to their own children (oh Seven Hells, Thea, just get it together and say something!) but she does not get that chance.

"Nine years, is it," he says to her ponderously, but of course, not too much so. An ironborn man is clever but must not need try.

"Ten," she says, her voice both too loud and too wavering, so that it echoes unflatteringly across the drafty room.

He says nothing of his error- perhaps he wishes she would not acknowledge it. "They took a little girl. What do you give me now?" he questions like a riddle and it's as if he wants to lay her bare.

"Your blood. A woman grown. A lady of Pyke," she answers with enough pride to satisfy him, but not enough to irritate him. Hopefully.

"We shall see," is all he has to say to her. She swallows hard.

"You shall," she sounds like she's _begging._

"You come as Stark's envoy. He had you for ten years…" he emphasizes the _ten. _"As long as I did." And she supposes, now that she sees him, her father did _have _her as cold and tight as Stark did- _am I your daughter or just another stone by the ocean to you, just another thing for you to judge as useful enough? _A spiteful part of her wonders. But not the rest of her.

"Not Stark's. The Lannister queen beheaded him," she informs him. _I saw her smile. _

"They are both dead, Stark and that Robert who broke my walls with his stones. I vowed I'd live to see them both in their graves, and I have." He says it more to himself than her. "Yet the cold and the damp still make my joints ache, as when they were alive. So what does it serve?" _I would have thought you'd see this environment as a part of you, _and she almost smirks then.

"It serves," she insists. "I brought you a letter-" _from a new king, father, and you can be one too- and if I tell you that would anything change for you- _she says, her voice stronger this time. _I am not Eddard Stark's envoy under the trap of a ward anymore, I come from a king's court._

He glares at her, ignoring the letter, asking "and who dressed you like that?" she freezes. "In the green lands do you flaunt yourself in whore's robes?" she clenches her fist so hard she feels her teeth clashing, her skin under the velvet feeling like fire.( Once when she was a child she saw some ships from Braavos come to port, with some of the most unusually dressed women she'd ever seen, none like the Iron Islands women- colorful and textured clothes and elaborate hair, some even with jeweled weapons at their hips. She'd expressed how fine they looked but her father had told her they did not look acceptable- common women may look in any way, but she was ironborn and would not decorate herself like a whore. )

"I will change my garb," she choked out, looking away.

"You will. Along with that bauble across your neck. I assume it was paid for with the gold price?" She does not answer. "I asked you, Thea."

"Yes." _What am I, one of your bannermen who must take everything from slain enemies? _

Her father rises from his chair, the furs sliding to the ground like animals bowing, and she does not have the time to react (if she would she knows she'd do nothing) as he reaches for the chain and rips it off her neck so hard a red line of pressure wraps around her throat and she winces all too visibly. "My daughter has taken an axe for a husband," he informs her. "If you will act as a Northern envoy you will not adorn yourself as a _courtly ornament_. I will have no northerner's woman in my land." There are no place for those here, she can gather- maybe another Asha would be. _I do not recall the last time I wept, _she tells herself. "I feared the green lands would soften you further, and I was right."

"Ned Stark was my warden, but my blood is made of salt and iron," she forces out, knowing he will not believe it of her.

Her father walks to the fire to warm his hands. "But the Stark boy sends you over like a trained raven with a message. A bird to sing a song. Unless you were sent just to go back to him with my words as a spy." Her throat is thick.

"No!" He stares her down. "This letter is great with its message. I suggested the offer," she says, and for the first time in what seems like a life-long visit she feels better.

"So the wolf king heeds your counsel?" his tone is old and gray as always but it sounds as if he's laughing at her, and to an extent Robb. But mostly her.

"He heeds my counsel, yes, as his men's and his lady mother's. I have lived with him, and he trusts me as his own blood-" _will you call me his whore now? _She thinks bitterly. _I am his advisor. _

"_No_," he says, this time so loud she nearly steps back. "Not in Pyke, not before me, he is not _your blood. _He is the son of the man who put your brothers underneath the sword, if you understand, unless you have forgotten Rodrik and Maron?" _You think I did not remember their names,_ she realizes. She has not forgotten- in fact, she does not remember her brothers with hate, but with fear. They had been violent and cruel…but that is the way of ironborn men and they had died in battle like ironborn men, Rodrik slain by one of Stark's men and Maron crushed in a collapsing tower.

"I remember my brothers very well," she insists, her voice shaking. "And when my father was a king as well. You may read the letter…" her eyes lower as she hesitates and hands him the letter, wrinkled under her iron grip, she'd had her hands on it for a long time of the voyage. "Your Grace."

He breaks the letter open and his eyes scan it coldly and she watches him obsessively as his lips twitch. "This boy," he begins, _the King in the North_ rings in her head, "would _give_ me a crown once more, if I only destroy his enemies." The old ways. Her father must love the idea of that, she'd thought.

"By now Robb is at the Golden Tooth," she calculates. "Once it falls, he'll be through the hills in a day. Lord Tywin's host is at Harrenhal, cut off from the west. The Kingslayer is a captive at Riverrun. Only Ser Stafford Lannister and the raw green levies he's been gathering remain to oppose Robb in the west. Ser Stafford will put himself between Robb's army and Lannisport, which means the city will be undefended when we descend on it by sea. If the gods are with us, even Casterly Rock itself may fall before the Lannisters so much as realize that we are upon them." _We_ it had been. Even Lady Stark, suspicious as she had always been, had known she was woven in.

"Casterly Rock has never fallen," her father scorns her, but that's all right, there have never been circumstances such as this, and partially because of her.

"Not until now." Well, not quite yet, but close, and it's enough to make her forgive her father's words or at least put them out of her mind. "And how sweet it shall be."

Her father looks colder than ever towards her. "So this is why Robb Stark sends you back to me, after so long? So you might win my consent to this plan of his?" _Did he think I would stay there forever? _She wonders. _Did _I_? _

"It was my plan," she reminds him boastfully. _Mine. Oh, yes. _"I will have some part in the attack if I cannot head it." She will not give him cause to mock her further by saying she shall ride in at the front. "As a reward, once we take it from the Lannisters, it would be nice for me to have Casterly Rock. You _did_ say to me once that if no male heirs were there, women could inherit…" and if the Iron Islands are to be Asha's, then…why not? It would be wealth anew for her house, and beyond these gray rocks. Her house would be looked on with new reverence.

"You reward yourself handsomely for a notion and a few lines of scribbling," he judges her, rereading the letter, searching. "The pup says nothing about a reward. Only that you speak for him, and I am to listen, and give him my sails and swords, and in return he will give me a crown." His voice is sharp and slowed. _Oh, no, _she thinks, clenching her fists so hard her nails drive into her palms, so she can distract herself. "He will give me a crown." She wills herself to not become frantic the way his fearsomeness used to make her as a child.

"A poor choice of words, what is meant-" she nearly stumbles over the words as she desperately tries not to sound as if she's hanging by thin strings.

"What is meant is what is said. The boy will give me a crown. And what is given can be taken away." Before she can say another word to his unhearing ears he throws the letter (_our letter, _she thinks, _my plan, ours) _onto the fire above her burning necklace. _I had nice penmanship, Septa Mordane could say that much of me, _she thinks, in a daze.

"Have you gone mad?" she sputters, her reaction delayed with shock. _What do you mean to do? Not another rebellion, oh seven hells,oh-_

She cries out as he lays the back of his hand rough over her face. "Mind your tongue. You are not in Winterfell now, and I am not your Robb the Boy, that you should speak to me so. I am the Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke, King of Salt and Rock, Son of the Sea Wind, and no man gives me a crown. I pay the iron price. I will take my crown, as Urron Redhand did five thousand years ago." Stepping back she looks on, open mouthed and horrified. _He has. He thinks it _is_ five thousand years ago. _Her face stings.

"Take it, then," she spits out, not even caring what he says next, she's remembered what to expect. "Call yourself King of the Iron islands, no one will care . . . until the wars are over, and the victor looks about and spies the old fool perched off his shore with an iron crown on his head."

He laughs, sharp and rough and unused. "At the very least you are not a craven, no more than I am a fool. My kingdom will not be a Western one from Robb the Boy's gifting…we will not test the Lannisters. But we do have another option…" and there is cunning in his eyes now, craft- not an old, mad fool.

It really is not Winterfell now, she realizes, but whether it is a too-late realization or she is ahead, she does not know.

_Xx_

If she is a princess of the Iron Islands then she must act the part, and that has been made clear enough to her by now; and since there's nothing to go back to she'll just have to slip no more.

A longship it is before her- hers. Not so grand as her father's or Uncle Victarion's (of course not) but it is fine and cold and it is _gray_ but the gray of strength and war and night and victory. Aeron will bless it come tomorrow, but even without that, she is sure that she will only have success out of any man who fights in her and her house's name on this ship. Sigrin, the old shipwright, assured her that much, not that she needed it.

She'll learn, she knows, despite the shivers that come when she's alone and thinks of commanding them to war. _I went to war with Robb. I saw war with my own eyes as a child and am cleverer and fiercer than most of these sand-caked drunken louts. They will have to follow me._

"I see you like the look of her," a voice of another woman says, the kind of voice that demands attention without even trying.

"Why, yes. She is a fair sight," Thea crosses her arms, smirking in satisfaction, watching the still ship as if it waits for her. The woman before her is clearly _ironborn, _sharp-faced and confident (without the showy vanity of most of the men she'd known back on the land), eyes smiling wickedly, plainly but well dressed. "And who would you be?" she asks. People tend to ignore her, she's observed, it's infuriating. Even her own handmaids shy away from her oftentimes.

"I'm Esgred. Ambrode's daughter, and wife to Sigrin." _Esgrid, _even the name is forged of iron and old days. Thea had not known Ambrode had a daughter or that aging, fading Sigrin had a wife. A strange match, really, she wonders what a woman like Esgrid would want from the man- ships, but that's a man's desire, almost every time.

"I would not have guessed," she grins. "But I was not sure otherwise, I will admit, how you would have known this maid." _Soon she will be no maid, though. _"By chance, do you know me?" she asks, sure that she at least has heard her name.

"Princess Thea of house Greyjoy. Who else?" Esgrid held out her hands, shrugging. "My husband will want to know what you think of the lovely maid."

She purses her mouth tightly, observing it from the distance, hoping she does not seem like a hapless greenland's wench. "I would like to be sure that it is at least as fast as it looks," she says.

"Faster than you know. A master would know how to handle this ship," and she frowns, turning her face away slightly from Esgrid. _Either she implies that I am fit to lead this ship or that I will never be able to master it. _

"Oho, I would be careful speaking that way," Esgrid cautions playfully, like a companion- she hasn't heard talk like that in a while, and she'd almost be grateful if it didn't seem like her ability to lead was being questioned and if it didn't seem like her life was being contested. She breathes in, her chest rising.

"She is a fair maid. I shall be easy on her, but prepare her for the coldness to come," she fondly looks upon it. _I will lead no doomed rebellion like my father. I will be greatly remembered, I will. _

Esgrid laughs at the statement. "Sweet princess, this is no fair maid. Your ship's a sea bitch."

Thea grins- that's the sort she's missed, amidst these old men like rocks. "You tell it true. And you have named her." Esgrid laughs again, shorter this time, and Thea pauses, making herself sound confident. "We go off to battle in a fortnight," she boasts. Or thinks that is how it sounds. And there is no response. "You should come to Pyke," she proposes, this woman probably has not seen enough of it aside from the rocks and the sand as it gets pounded by the icy waves. The people must love her. The old man will come and collect his wife like men do later and Asha will not look upon her sister as disconnected and she'll have someone to pass time with rather than staring out a window drunkenly and _thinking. _

"I have no horse," Esgrid tells her.

"My squire has one," Wex, the mute boy, who never gave her trouble, mostly because he has no tongue to be sharp or treacherous. People can do things without useful tongues…but still.

"I will not want that poor boy to walk all the way back," Esgrid says, like a soft woman; almost amusing.

"Share mine," she says thoughtlessly.

"And where would I be on your horse?" Esgrid asks, and she isn't sure why, maybe she's being humored, she doesn't mind.

"Oh, anywhere," she makes to fetch her horse, at the inn. "Come along. I must go to my father's dim hall." Esgrid's eyes glint.

"Then let me see your father's great castle," she requests, more of a demand than Thea is entirely comfortable with. Esgrid walks with assurance, walks the way someone who knows who she is would carry herself, she walks like no man, but no woman, all the way down to Lordsport. Thea makes sure to carry herself high and tall to match the ironmen, and she's not sure whether or not to be surprised when some of them bow their heads to her for a few moments as she passes them by. _You should not be surprised, but you should expect better. _"My lady princess," she asks Thea, "have you begun selecting your crew yet?" _It will be a fortnight…and I have just arrived…_she thinks with too much nervousness in her. Before she can answer, thankfully, Esgrid calls out to a large man. "Bluetooth! How fares your bride?"

"Fat with child, and talking of twins," he replies, and his head is covered in a helm of a raven.

"How soon. You sure got your oar in the water quickly," Esgrid grins.

"Aye, and stroked and stroked and stroked," Bluetooth describes- Thea is almost grateful, come to think of it, that her father never shipped her off to a man to be wedded- and moves off.

"He is rather large," and large men often win, unlike in the songs, the small ones get crushed so easily. "I wonder if I should choose him for the Sea Bitch," she ponders. "Bluetooth, he was called?"

"Only if you mean to insult him. Bluetooth has a sweet ship of his own," Esgrid explains and for a split second Thea wants to send her out of her sight for knowing more than she does herself of these strange men who will hold to her.

"I have been away for too long to know one man from another…mostly," she does not mean her father, or her family, of course, but she can't expect Esgrid to know that, and since this island knows nothing of her, the people would likely never guess it either. The few she did remember, ones she used to call friends as a child-they'd have to remember her, she'd thought- were gone somehow or died on beds of childbirth or completely unrecognizable. _These lands have made you soft,_ she can hear. "My uncle Victarion has loaned me his own steersman." She gestures with her hand, raising her head. It was odd talking to him, and he looked upon her not as a relative, but without hate. She cannot think anything but that he sees her as a stranger as well, _but they'll see._

"Rymolf Stormdrunk? A good man, so long as he's sober." _I am lost, _she thinks morosely, her eyes widening slow and open. "Uller, Qarl. Where's your brother, Skyte?" Esgrid immediately moves on to island.

"The Drowned God needed a strong oarsman, I fear," says a man with a white beard.

"What he means is, Eldiss drank too much wine and his fat belly burst," continues a younger man with a soft look about his face.

"What's dead may never die," the four of them say and so Thea says it along with them. _These are my words as much as yours, _but she will not give any of them the opportunity to hear her say it aloud.

"You are very well known," she begins to tell Esgrid, a lilt in her voice.

"Every man loves the shipwright's wife." _But not their rightful princess. _Although it does makes sense, she must admit, for Esgrid to be so well acquainted with them all-she almost wonders just _how_ well acquainted. "He had better, lest he wants his ship to sink. If you need men to pull your oars, you could do worse than those three." _So ships are sailed by love as much as iron?_ She will not have to ask, the sea will tell her.

"Lordsport has no lack of strong arms," it will all fall into place. She may be just a northern false princess to some and just the King's daughter in the background to others, but their King was an old, brittle man, one that could not last forever, and whatever his plans were…she would have her own one way or another.

"Strength is not enough. A longship's oars must move as one if you would have her best speed. Choose men who have rowed together before, if you're wise," Esgrid instructs. She narrows her eyes. _You do not need to be _taught_. You are an heir to these islands. I am wise without this woman,_ a part of her shouts but the rest listens. Listening, she had found over time, was often useful if it had to be.

"Sage counsel," she says, but no more on that. She does not want to go on about this anyway, and besides, the more she speaks of _plans_ the more she sounds as if she is so in need. And so she stays silent, walking rapidly to keep up with Esgrid, but no, she's not that far behind at all, until they reach the overcrowded inn.

From the doorway she can see tables and chairs filled with men, drinking and gambling and rousing, and hard-eyed, tattooed whores. "_Wex!" _the stupid boy had better not be trying to find some woman, she thinks, being quiet will only get you so far. But there is no response and she scours the room until she sees the boy by a stack of coins and a goblet of wine; and she shouts his name louder as she approaches him. "It is time to leave," she hisses, but he outright ignores her- he isn't even that drunk, unless he just can't handle it- and she grabs his ear and drags him behind her as he hurriedly keeps up. At least he is silent- a squire, or perhaps a person in general, could benefit from that one in a while. But his _eyes_ aren't silent- the look he gives Esgrid is complete shock, as if he fancies her or something ridiculous. "Esgred will be riding with me back to Pyke. Saddle the horses, and be quick about it." Boys think they are immortal and if they do not they think they are men.

She smiles when she sees her massive horse- it's suited for a man, probably, but she gets to mount this one- and Esgrid laughs appreciatively. "Where did you find that hellhorse?" _Hellhorse, _she likes the sound of it. Great and terrible go hand in hand, after all, and an enemy's hell is her heaven- the mortality of a feather.

"Lord Botley bought him in Lannisport a year past, but he proved to be too much horse for him, so Botley was pleased to sell," she says, knowing most ironmen are not riders. _And most ironmen are certainly not me, but that does not mean I cannot go on._ This is not an average horse, anyway, clearly, shining black and larger than most; he'd tried to bite her face off the first time he saw her. _Winterfell taught me, _she knows, and she cannot look back, but maybe in some ways she has to. Wouldn't anyone?

"I call him Smiler. I've been told I smile at all the wrong things," she mounts the horse along with Esgrid, feeling her strength against her. _Do I feel like that? _She wonders. _I will not waste into gray crust like my father, nor will I lie in indolence like southron ladies, nor will I ever allow anyone to lock me away to become a name the way they did with my mad mother. I am a woman and I am ironborn. Do you feel that? You must not. No one seems to. _

"Do you?" _that's an odd question, _she thinks, and almost laughs without wanting, that's exactly what Robb would have said.

"Only by the lights of those who smile at nothing," of which there are so many in the world. Too many, especially around here. She laughs thinly as she takes the reins and as the horse runs ahead, across the lands, uninterrupted.

That is, until ,Esgrid bids her to tell of her father. "He scarcely welcomed me," she admits grudgingly, "and I am his blood and one of his two sole heirs." _Asha was always before me. _"But…" she forces optimism. "I am his blood."

"Oh," she replies with slight interest. "It is said you have other relatives."

"My brothers are long dead," she'd thought that was common knowledge, "and my sister is the captain of the Black Wind. I hear she wears men's garb, but that does not make her a man any more than it makes me a man." She had never hated Asha, but from what she had heard of her in her father's rare letters in Winterfell, it is fairly easy to resent that she is more accepted. "She had a vulture's beak of a nose and a boy's chest, but she was my sister. I am not sure if my father will make marriage arrangements for her, nor for me…." There would be a demand for an heir soon after her father's death, she knows, it's not as if she wants him to die, but- she can only imagine how it is in the North, but they have more on their minds, and they will have an even heavier load, she realizes. And in turn she realizes she's gone and spoken practically her life story.

"But your uncles…" Esgrid says. _What do you know of them? _She almost genuinely wonders.

In the islands, she knows, the brothers of a king were like to take the lives of the sons to take their throne if the son was weak enough. _I will grow stronger, even more than I am already. _"Aeron is full of seawater and lives for only his-" she slips on her tongue. "Our god. What is dead may never die." She's said it more than one day than in ten years. "He will not trouble me if I respect his god. As for Victarion…"

"Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet, and a fearsome warrior. I have heard them sing of him in the alehouses," Esgrid tells her. _I could use her as an informant if I ever needed to, _she supposes.

"I have spoken with him, yes," she says. "During my father's rebellion he sailed to Lannisport with my uncle Euron and burned the lionmen's fleet," she remembers, briefly, but surely. "That was Euron's plan, though, Victarion is a gray bullock, he is strong and dutiful but he will not win, if you know what I mean. He is loyal, made more for following than leading," she says. _I am as ironborn as he is, if not more. _

"Euron Croweye has no lack of cunning, though. I've heard men say terrible things of that one." _With the company you keep I'm sure most of what you hear is terrible._ But she is right. To an extent.

She considers. "My uncle is missing, since two years. It is believed he could be dead." It's strange, there's no trace of sadness in her voice, or even happiness that he is out of her way. He's another stranger to her, even more immersed in the old days, so immersed that his ship could very well be sleeping under waters a world away.

"It is possible. But if he lives he will be half a stranger." _Just as I thought. _"A stranger would never seat the Seastone Chair." _A Seastone Chair has a better ring to its name than an iron throne, _she realizes, having seen drawings of the ornate monstrous pile of swords. She'd heard the Mad King bled upon it.

"No," she agrees, but before she can take comfort in it, she realizes that most of them look upon her as an unwelcome stranger herself. But it's been ten years, and she has a whole life ahead of her, a whole life to prove herself and reign, and soon these few days will be just a memory. "But tonight is my father's hour…" she says dryly. "I will sit with him at the dais." _It will be my turn to look upon everyone. _"You shall find a place among the people there, I think. My father…will not be there long. He does not have the stomach for it anymore." _An old king is not much of a king,_ she knows. _My father makes note of Robb's youth to distract himself from his own lack of youth, I assume, and mine. _

"A grievous thing when a great man grows old," Esgrid remarks. _If you feared me too much you would not speak of my father that way, but you do not…you are bold. _She decides speaking of her father might not paint her in a _bold_ way, lying isn't exactly one her main talents. _My father has done large, great, things, but I do not know if he is so great now. His shadow towered over me and so I thought he was great. _

"Well, he is the father of me, and I shall be a great lady. Perhaps even a queen," she replies, logically.

"How modest," Esgrid half-jokes, not at her expense, in that way of hers.

"Why should I humble myself?" she tightens her grip, making the horse go so fast it's like flying. "The world is full of men who'd do that for me so they can see themselves as great." _Or for nothing, _but that is known.

"True," Esgrid seems to agree. "What shall I wear to this great feast, though? I am sure you have some fine garb prepared…"

"I'll ask Helya to garb you. One of my lady mother's gowns might do. She is off on Harlaw, and not expected to return," she says off the top of her head. Truth be told, it isn't that she does not want to see or know her mother. But it's easier to not see her, than to see her. _It makes perfect sense. She would not recognize me anyway, from what I hear. _

"The cold winds have worn her away, I hear. Will you not go see her? Harlaw is only a day's sail, and surely Lady Greyjoy yearns for a last sight of her daughter…" _she has a daughter, _a bitter, mocking part of her wants to spit back, the part of her that grew underneath the sliding shadows and in the blazing, searing light.

"Last sight? Come peace, perhaps," she corrects, bristling. "Would that I could, but I am occupied, along with my father."

"Your coming would bring her peace," Esgris advises. _She is beyond peace._

"Oh, you're a bore," Thea half-teases, sighing. "You sound a foolish woman…mad with love." _As she is._

"You are not all wrong. I am new with child," Esgrid confesses, and suddenly, Thea feels as if she does not belong near her at all, as if she is from an entirely separate world. _But you are already, _she hears, from the shadows.

"Well," she replies. "Your body has certainly recovered. I…" _what in seven hells can I say? Had I been a man I would not have such trouble, I would have made this whole island know me by now, rather than fretting over words. _"Hope your family becomes as iron as you."

"Oh," there is laughter in her voice. "They shall. Now, my lady, you must tell me more of this...war you have," and Thea begins telling her, of how she watched men die so many times she feared it less than some of the men themselves, how she was not a warrior of the north but did put her arrows to use a few more times than none (lions are not immune to feathers), how Winterfell was in her memory that seemed so distant that she could feel it in her veins. Everything, really, but not- _almost. _And of what was sure to come. It is nice to have someone who comes close to understanding- she's missed it. _She is clever, I suppose, clever enough to not try and outwit me the way some would. That old man should give her a chance to shine the way she does. _It's peace to speak of war, at least, until Pyke looms over her and it's true, and she must go to her father. She can barely get off her horse without the gang of dogs swarming around her feet, so she scowls and kicks out so they run and give her some room as she and Esgrid dismount.

"Take the horse and these damn dogs," she tells the grinning stableman, who does not seem to even know she is there, let alone listen to her.

"Lady Asha!" he greets Esgrid, _ indeed everyone loves the shipwright's- he said- _the thoughts reel in her head and her mouth snaps open silently.

"Last night," she says. "I sailed from Great Wyk with Lord Goodbrother, and spent the night at the inn. My little sister was kind enough to let me ride with her from Lordsport." _Seven hells, you are Asha, aren't you. _Her stomach rolls as she watches her sister kiss one of the dogs while keeping her eyes on her in a way that makes her feel even more ill. Wordlessly she glares at her sister, her strong older sister, _you lied all along and would have if not for the stablehand and you mocked me to my face! You must see me the way they do. _She wants to leave, but can't- that would just make her sister win her sick game, whatever the purpose is. "The vulture's beak is still there, little sister, but as you can tell the boy's chest has been replaced," she grins. "I wonder if I shall dress as a _man_?" Thea does not answer, just stares. "Until later, sweet sister," her eyes are softer but her grin is that of a shark's. She walks off before even giving Thea a chance to ask any questions. Even Wex is smiling at her in a strange way.

She slaps him. "You should have warned me. I don't care if you have no tongue, not everything is an excuse," she watches his face. "And you shouldn't have enjoyed that." _I would have thought if anyone would welcome me it would be her. _

On the way inside she says nothing, looking straight ahead coldly while she tries remembering everything she'd said. _She'll tell Father, won't she. She wants to be the Queen after he is gone and she thinks I'm nothing but an overdressed Northern camp follower. _

She slams the great door shut to her chambers, fires reflecting over her face but somehow it's still colder. The dim golden light flickers over her as she crosses her arms, shrugging her dust-marked cloak to the ground (still just as dusty as it was, _of course.) _She takes off her shoes, wrenching them off as her hair comes half undone, a few strands hanging into her mouth; and she spits them away, pouring wine into a goblet. _Oh gods, I am such a fool, _she swallows full and hard, using her other hand to rub her aching forehead. _No! _she concludes as she stares out the window at the darkening sky, always gray, even the ocean. _She wants me to seem so foolish that I do not know my own sister, she wants to tell me I have no place here and that these islands are hers. She has turned them all against me by virtue of having them in her favor already! _She bites her lips, wringing her hands until the sensation irritates her, and she drinks more.

The music in the distance is faded but it grows louder with the moments, and she cannot afford to be too late, so she groans as she gets up. _I shall have to choose different clothes. I will not have my sister laugh as my father calls me a whore before this feast. _She does not have any jewels she took in war or from that wildling who went after Bran, only bought. All the better in its own way, the plainer she dresses, the more ironborn she will seem.

In the mirror she is black and gray; long, sharp, lines and thick, rough-hewn fabrics and little skin to be shown. _At least I look how I feel. Let them all see how I am them. _

But when she enters, she is the one who looks, stopping at the doorway before entering to see these four hundred or so ironmen (_ironmen, _mostly men, her father's) from all over the islands. Among them were thralls and musicians, and large men dancing with axes- the finger dance, so called because their sharp partners often cut off fingers, as axes do.

Before walking up, she stares at the Seastone Chair, the one that no one would have her on. It's old and weathered but still fit for power, massive and shining black, in the form of a kraken. _Of course, Asha sits to the right of it, at my father's right hand so that she can snatch up his place when he is gone. _To her father's left, however, are her uncles- even more members of her family she dreads seeing as she walks closer and closer, feeling like she's walking on knives. But she keeps her head high. _When I saw those men fighting I felt that I could have walked through their crossfire and come out alive because I knew what life was, I knew what it meant to keep going. I can do that now. _It should come easier.

She does not meet anyone's eye as she sits to her sister's side. "You come late, Thea." _You call her "daughter", though. You always did. _

"I ask your pardon," she says tonelessly as she can manage, turning to Asha. "I suppose you are fond of the seating arrangement. You must love the idea of knowing your place," she smiles, grimacing and joyless.

"Oh, sweet sister," everything about her tone mocks her. "I would have thought you did not mind, after all, was your place not Winterfell?" _You and he have always thought I was weak, did you not! I can gather you laughed as you read my letters back to you when I was back there, you laughed when I said I was content in the Stark's home. _"And I heard you dressed in pretty clothes, too…" Thea glares at her _perfect ironborn_ sister's _perfect ironborn_ clothes, green wool, sharply cut and unelaborate and powerfully silhouetted. _I know how they see me, do you think I am that great of a fool? In the end, sister, all that matters about looks is not how much of a man you can dress as, but whether or not you are a man, and if you're not then you will need more than a sharp tongue and chainmail, bitch. _

_When did we get to the point where we wouldn't be able to recognize each other? _She couldn't have even been around for it. "And have you rusted away your hauberk?" she glares at that wool of her sister's. _When I must go forward I won't become some old man like you seem to want to; I'll never become father, wasting away and looking to the past like this hole of a kingdom. _"Wouldn't I love to see you in iron."

"You may yet, little sister . . . if you think your Sea Bitch can keep up with my Black Wind." _So this is a competition now! _She'll not say it before her father and uncles, but another time, perhaps when she is again alone with Asha, maybe she can straighten all this out. Asha's voice loses its mocking tone for a moment. "Are you having wine or ale tonight, little sister?" _Do you think I forgot I was your fucking sister? _

"Wine," she drones, glaring at the thrall nearby, waiting to fill herself up good and satiated to distract herself from whatever _this_ is. Of course, Asha wants ale, like an ironman; she half expects some comment about Thea being a green princess with soft royal tastes. She takes some bread and orders a servant to fill her a trencher of stew- it's revolting fish cream, but she decides to eat some of it anyway. Strange, she never thought about how thick and terrible the smell of fish was. But since she already had wine enough to distract her somewhat for this feast back in her chambers, she decides she doesn't care if she gets ill, no one will notice except that cruel sister of hers. _And then I'll just have more. _"You lied to me. About Sigrin, and the ship, right down to your _child and being a woman wed_. _Everything." And for what? To get me to admit Father sees me as unwelcome not only as an heir, but unwelcome to give him one further down? _

"That was true enough, the last part," Asha stands up without warning, shouting for some man called Rolfe, signaling with one of her hands to one of the dancers. She narrows her eyes in confusion before noticing the sudden glint of the silver axe shooting across the room and wheels her head to the side- _are you threatening me!- _trying and failing not to shriek as the axe comes close enough for Thea to raise her arms defensively over her face and Asha to catch it close, lovingly, and swinging its edge into the table across her place so that drops of stew fly in all directions. "That's my lord husband," she says, all too satisfied with herself (and Thea's face contorts) as she reaches down into that _perfect ironborn _shirt of hers, right over her_ perfect ironborn chest_ (you want to show it off don't you?) and pulls out a jagged, gleaming knife- "and _here's_ my sweet suckling babe!"

Thea's chest rises and falls rapidly with ragged breaths- it's not every day you have an axe fly at you- as she grits her teeth, her mouth twisting upwards just enough to qualify as a smile. _You planned this, _she hopes the look on her face conveys to Asha as her ears ring with laughter from the entirety of the hall. _How many hundreds? _She will not look at them. But the only alternative is her family- her uncle Victarion is laughing and her father is smiling. _The one time I please you it's when your _daughter_ mocks me before our court. _I_ am your daughter just as much as she is! _Amidst the stomach-churning laughter are cheers- they must be for Asha's trick but a sinking feeling tells her it's more mockery.

Asha doesn't laugh, though, what she does is lean closer and lower her voice as she stabs a fish on a platter with her knife. "You would do well to heed the advice I had to give you, little sister," she dictates, and it makes Thea enraged enough to get up and leave- but that would just do her in worse. "If you had tried to learn even the first thing about Sigrin, I would not have been able to fool you. They see you as a wolf for a reason. And if you know nothing and no one…how can you expect to walk these islands as the ironborn's princess?" Thea's face hardens. "You may be their princess by law and blood, but this is not the North. You had best learn that."

"I did not forget," Thea snaps back. "And not once did I say this is the North." _You are the one who knows nothing! They do not see me as a wolf. A wolf is powerful and threatening. These men see me as next to nothing, worse than ordinary. _

"Thea," Asha quiets her voice, her tone tinged with a mix of patience and annoyance. "I sacrificed much to captain the Black Wind, more than any man, and I was glad to because I got what I paid for. The ironborn are not your boy king's bannermen or noble knights from songs. They will not _bend the knee_ or follow your blood because of our father and you will need to keep in mind that they will expect you to earn what you take instead of having it given. I spent many years out of your sight and they made me endure and rise strong…but they were not _kind." _

"Are you warning me?" Thea's lip curls.

"Yes," Asha lowers her eyelids. "There are harsher things than laughter." Thea's stomach jolts so sickeningly that she pours some wine down her throat to mask the look on her face. "These men do not_ value_ you. I had to make them follow me. And these islands will not _fall _toyou until you remember where you are." _I do remember, _she wanted to scream, but the years had been so long, as Asha said, and she does not want to admit her sister is right, but…the time does not lie.

"Clean this up," she turns and orders a thrall, gesturing to the cracked table and spilling meal surrounding her place. _I cannot tell if she is threatening me away from taking what she wants, but I suppose if she wanted, she could have used her axe on me, as ironborn have done before; and clearly she does not want to- she is my sister, even if she thinks I am as useless as all these men do. She just does not want me in her way, and thinks I am foolish enough to not understand how cruel men are. She thinks I am a simple Northern maid…_she frowns coldly. _But she thinks I am also a wolf. _She attempts for just a slight moment to discern what her sister had meant about taking and earning- _in Winterfell I had no power, though I was an advisor. Now I am nothing and she expects me to be able to rise the way she had. If she tells me becoming a ship captain was difficult then how can she expect me to do this, when she thinks I am weak? _She wonders this over wine, enough cups for her to feel distant, and she does not count, even sampling some ale. She says nothing to Asha, only looking at her morosely throughout the feast, but to her irritation, Asha only looks pityingly to her. _Harsher things than laughter? _

The food is terrible, and after a while she gives up and just decides that the wine is enough, and it lasts her throughout the courses. Of course, Asha eats it, though she doesn't stuff herself full of food. _Perfect ironborn._ Between stolen glances at Asha and occasionally at her father- he doesn't look back to her, which makes her throat tighten, but in a way, she's grateful- she does not look at anyone. Especially not down at the people below.

She rises to attention the minute her father stands up. _I must not disappoint him. "_Have done with your drink and come to my solar. We have plans to lay," he tells to the men around him; but even though it wasn't meant for her, she knows she must come along anyway- any plans of his are plans of hers by extension. If it's her father's rebellion- she supposes it's hers, too. As the guards follow her father and uncles along, she hurries to stand up, balancing herself on the edge of the table. "You're in a rush, little sister," Asha says over a cup of ale, her thin, cunning eyebrows moving up.

"Our lord father is waiting," she turns up her nose.

"Yes, and he has for many a year. Waiting is his lot, and he will not be troubled by a few moments more from you. Do you fear his wrath, little sister?" Thea's blood boils as she leans over the table, closer to Asha, not giving an answer. "You need not fear our uncles. One is full of seawater and madness and the other is an old gray bullock, neither of whom can keep up with the likes of you?" Asha shakes her head to herself, and Thea can't see any satisfied superiority in her older sister's face. She can barely make out what her face is saying. Didn't she used to be able to do that?

"You know what I meant!" she spits out, not even caring to lower her voice. No one is near enough to them on the dais to overhear, anyway, and the clamor in the hall is so loud that Asha would have to cause another scene for anyone to pay attention. "This is what I must do. We are Father's heirs. Do you _ honestly _expect Father to marry me off to some old salted lord so I can make an heir for _his dear future queen?" _she realizes her face is darkening. "_This_ is _my_ place now. You may mock me all you will for it."

Asha only looks to her silently, eyes filled with something she can't pinpoint, something that isn't any kind of laughter she's ever known; in fact, her sister has never looked more gray. "Sail your fair maid, sweet sister," she drawls without condescension or mocking, and Thea doesn't understand at all. "Have her close and all your own."

Thea takes her thin skirts in her hand, turning abruptly and walking as fast as she can without letting herself run in front of the whole hall, after her father. Outside of the hall, under the darkened sky, her feet crisscross over the rocky ground and she nearly trips. But no journey is completely smooth, she tells herself.

_Don't look down, _she tells herself, but all Her feet drag through the mud, tracking over the soaked-through boards of the old bridge, and she shudders, gripping the rope of the side so hard she wonders if it wouldn't snap. She moves her feet carefully, slowly, sliding rather than trampling over the boards, but the bridge shakes under the storm's wind and her legs nearly give out at the same time she ducks her head over the rope to heave. _No one is around, _she rationalizes herself, _and none can laugh. And I certainly will not fall. Ironborn do not drown. _And if she did, would anyone mourn?

She nearly smiles with relief as she crosses over the last board, or she would smile, but she realizes lately she's been in no mood to. _My home is changing me. Or Winterfell changed me from who I was...did I always feel like this? _ She refuses to think of it as she walks into the room where her father is, straightening her shoulders so they will not shiver among the wet, freezing room. Her eyes flicker, but she can see her father, wrapped in furs the way he was when she first saw him. She stands listening to her uncle Victarion's talk of the weather- _forget what Asha said,_ she tells herself, _a man of war he may be but that does not mean I am nothing. _"I have made my plans," her father says, presumably to her, but he does not even look at her. She wonders if he can guess there is rage in her face. Or if he cares. "Hear them."

"But father, I have some suggestions-" she begins, clenching her fist, not even surprised as he cuts her off openly.

"If I required your counsel I would have asked for it." She stiffens. "We have had a bird from Old Wyk. Dagmer is bringing the Drumms and Stonehouses. If the god grants us good winds, we will sail when they arrive . . . or, Thea, you will. You should be able to do this; you will be accompanied. I mean for you to strike the first blow.. You shall take eight longships north-" her mouth drops open. _How can he say this! Though I have had little experience I should be able to do this with enough men to fight…I am his daughter but he means to place me in the position of a berserking reaver plundering his own village. _

It makes her sickened. "Eight?" she shrieks, lightheaded. "What can I – you- expect with only eight longships?" Her uncles are gaping at her.

"I _expect_ you to harry the Stony Shore, raiding the fishing villages and sinking any ships you chance to meet. It may be that you will draw some of the northern lords out from behind their stone walls. Aeron will accompany you, and Dagmer Cleftjaw."_ Raiding a fishing village! _Is all she can think. _But you would not make _your daughter_ do this! _She went to war before. _I did not go in the battlefield but I watched, yes, right at its edge. I saw men gut each other and bite the gold from each other's hands, I saw decapitations and severing of limbs, I saw them scream like demons and weep like women on their gory deathbeds, I saw it all. And do not think I am too weak to know war. I watched them die when most closed their eyes behind their gilded helms. _More than one time she had given them mortality. _I was on the northern side then, more than I was for the lions. I had a bow and arrow and at the side of that field I narrowed my eyes until the world was target and I shot off and off and off! _Once she'd almost slid her feather through the Kingslayer. She'd missed. _But almost, and closer, just think of what I could do. And with men behind me. I would make them follow ahead and follow me, not behind._

"May the Drowned God bless our swords," prays Aeron. _How can you at a time like this? Shouldn't you know that faith won't give you what you want? _She certainly has nothing she could want. _You send me as a reaver to mock me, I know you do! _Burning and thieving is not what she will do in her life and yet he expects it of her, and under the commands of his own men. _No! You want me to watch the old ironborn ways. You want to tell me I will never belong! _Her thoughts reel uncontrollably. _You want to make me watch the men steal fishermen's daughters and force them all to swear loyalty from Robb to you. _

"Asha, my daughter." _You've gone mad,_ she thinks again, but then sees Asha is there in the room. _I had not noticed…_she grits her teeth, trying not to look her sister in the eye. "You shall take thirty longships of picked men round Sea Dragon Point. Land upon the tidal flats north of Deepwood Motte. March quickly, and the castle may fall before they even know you are upon them." Thea nearly vomits all her wine. _How many fucking castles do you mean for _your daughter _to have!_

"I've always wanted a castle," Asha replies pleasantly. _Deepwood Motte should be mine. I know it best, after all, I've been there. Once it's taken the rest of the North can't be so difficult and it should not be too much of a hassle to take…_she tells herself. _You would never be able to do it, _she hears. _You can't even fight a war. You can barely hold place at court. You can't even find one. _

"Then take one," her father supports Asha in his own way. "Victarion, the main thrust shall fall to you. When my daughters have struck their blows, Winterfell must respond." It must be the wine in her, but her stomach buckles and she feels so overloaded she almost reaches for the table at risk of collapsing. "You should meet small opposition as you sail up Saltspear and the Fever River. At the headwaters, you will be less than twenty miles from Moat Cailin. The Neck is the key to the kingdom. Already we command the western seas. Once we hold Moat Cailin, the pup will not be able to win back to the north . . . and if he is fool enough to try, his enemies will seal the south end of the causeway behind him, and Robb the boy will find himself caught like a rat in a bottle."

"A bold plan, Father, but the lords in their castles—" _just if you listened to me instead of the sea and the songs rolling in your head!_

"Silence. The lords are gone south with the pup. Those who remained behind are the cravens, old men, and green boys. They will yield or fall, one by one. Winterfell may defy us for a year, but what of it? The rest shall be ours, forest and field and hall, and we shall make the folk our thralls and salt wives." She thinks of the Stark household, of what they would say if they heard this, the thought of which sends high laughter burning through her head, but none comes from her mouth as her lips wordlessly part. _Ours, _the words seems foreign. Most vows do.

"And the waters of wrath will rise high, and the Drowned God will spread his dominion across the green lands!" strange as it is, Thea is thankful for Aeron's distraction. She'd rather listen to his nonsense than her father's disgracing her. _The Drowned God will spread his prayers but I will spread ships. Eight now. But I will be around after this…reaving trip. And maybe once my sister and father are shocked that I have not gotten myself killed whilst climbing aboard they will see me for ironborn as they are. _

"What is dead may never die," she murmurs, holding her head with one of her hands as they all say it. _If only, _she thinks meaninglessly. _What a vague phrase. It can mean whatever you want it to, just like the sea and my uncle's god._

She stays, waiting for her father to rise before she leaves but he does not acknowledge her, nor does Aeron (if he even sees her, what does he see? They say he is mad. She does not disagree. But she does not know madness) or Victarion (to her pleasure, almost, he has nothing that would make her regret coming, as she very nearly almost does.)

So she walks out alone into the torrential rain, cringing and swallowing bile as the sea air thrashes her over the breaking bridge, taunting her with the possibilities (drowning, or broken on the rocks with a useless body, or filled with seawater and lunacy and desperate prayers, wouldn't those be something), and so she looks at them. _I am ironborn, _she wants to tell the waves as she squints to make them out, kneeling and trying to push her way up without falling as the salt licks her hair.

She nearly screams when a hand presses down on her, but it's only Asha. "You cannot hold your wine," she observes, pulling her up to her feet, a position she struggles to hold, and ends up leaning into Asha to her lamenting. _I will look upon this with regret tomorrow and she will laugh at me, _a part of her thinks, but another part notices how strong Asha is, and wonders why she's bothering to help her along if there's nothing she has that's seen of value. _We ran over this so many years ago. I did not think I would ever fall. _She grips ahold of Asha, her head slumping onto her shoulder.

"I liked you better when you were Esgrid," she slurs judgmentally.

"Oh, little sister, I suppose I liked you better when you were nine." Asha pulls a strand of her hair and she looks down, or back, or ahead. _I liked you better, _rings in her head, and she doesn't have the energy to drive it out.

She doesn't remember getting back to her chambers, but when she wakes up midday and her head pounding, she also doesn't remember her dream. Her dream of stepping onto a boat and falling off its gangplank the moment she lays her foot upon it, and plunging into the salt water that churns so rapidly that she can't tell one direction from another when she is swallowed underneath, and she hears screaming, laughing, sounds that are both or none, and she thrashes, trapped in slithering coils, and the more she struggles the more tangled they become. She forgets where the boat was headed but she knows it's going on without her, but if she untangles, she can reach it, she _can- it's a kraken carrying me, _she realizes,_ it's Asha-no- someone's drowning me,_ can she drown forever? She tastes salt and blood, and howling of wolves rings in her ears. _So far away. _Eyes laugh at her, eyes of maids. _Life may seldom be a song but when it is, it is no nice song._

_Xx_

The battlefield cannot even be called that, it's a dockside village of gray men and soaked grounds, a detached, faded, Northern imitation of Pyke, and a bad one at that, but she swings that sword forward in the din of battle and for one fleeting moment she's a reaver as best as any reaver could be, better and more exceptional than the ones of the songs and maybe they'll write a song about her, or maybe not.

A green boy edges his mace at her, a green northern boy without a helm and she pushes him down with the flat of her sword and he's trampled and she looks away because she cannot see him as anyone but another mortal boy who would be a mortal man, and an armored old man- northern, northern- comes toward her and she plunges her sword at him, not killing him but drawing enough blood to draw out his exhausted energy and she throws back her head and sighs out a long exhale. "_Did I say it was time for bed!"_ she screams, exhilarated into the sky at her men and the fighting is thicker. She sees Aeron standing in the distance, at prayer.

Dagmer is by her side, as he has been this whole battle; no one seems to notice, to her relief, even sometimes she's forgetting anyone is there except her and the vagueness that is _them. I do not know these men, they are nothing to me except obstacles. _

"Bitch!" yells a man, one she can't see- she sees them all but she can't tell who it is and she narrows her eyes and strengthens her grip on the sword. _Asha would gut him and laugh. The weak northern princess would cringe and put a hand to her mouth and shrink away. _She throws another man down and he'll get up soon, but her men are on him anyway, all so close together. Dagmer moves closer to her, almost protectively, but that's not what she can see right now, she must not, because then everyone else will.

She nearly falls for one terrible moment as a club slams against her shoulders but she stiffens her feet and keeps standing. "_Turncloak whore!" _one man spits, some northerner. _My sister would use her husband and sweet babe on him, would she not? She'd cut off his cock while drinking from a horn of ale and brag to me about it. And that fucking northern princess they think I am would have no way to deny it. _She roars with half-laughter as she hacks through the passages made by the tightly packed groups of men. _Just one man, _but she shouts at her men to fight harder. The armor made for her chafes against her so nicely, though, like a warrior's, a true one's. _I did not come so close in Riverrun; my arrows did, but I did not. _She's not sure what to think of it.

"Say what you will! You'll be saying _hail King Balon_ soon enough!" she calls back to them, her voice _not_ faltering as they just reply to her those same words again and again.

She lunges out with her sword but Dagmer takes her shoulder. "Move back," he tells her.

"I will not! My father commanded-"

"He commanded me to watch you as you said. Not to let you die by the hands of aging green men's third-rate sellswords," he shoots her down and looks at her like she's not his lady, like she's some child. "Go back, Thea."

Biting her lip so hard it's like to fall off, she moves away, at his side, fighting off men who grab at her neck and slice toward her chest. "Show yourself, turncloak!" _Maybe it was one of the men I was at the table with that night, _she doesn't want to think. "The king will have your head." She knows which one he means and she turns her head back, for a slight moment, she should know better. "You betrayed your king and yourself!"

"How dare you!" she stops in her place. "I am to be your-"

Dagmer glares at her. _And you! You're just like the rest of them, all of you here are the same. And I am a kraken, not a maid running from wolves. _

"You were his whore and you ran so you could be a queen!" _you're just saying that because you're all left behind from the true warriors, you hold the island here because no one else is low enough to! You wish you could have been at the side of a king to make a kingdom the way I was. _Twice.

If she stays she'll spread herself too thin, a part of her hears. _You can't do this! You can do nothing and even Dagmer knows it, even the boys of four and ten with barely any training know it, _she hears. _Turncloak _rings in her ears, her head burning. _I could have all your heads one day and then you would know the true importance of fussing over a word. _Word. It sounds like ward. Ward. It sounds like whore. She could scream.

But she moves away, forcing a sick smile onto her face as her hair drags over her shoulders and her boots (gray with mud) slick through the ground. _One day I will take them all, _she tells herself. _And my father will love it and my sister will not mock me for it and my mother will not be ill and no one will ever turn their ugly words on me again and they will bend the knee to my house- _my_ house. _She's a terrible liar, but she won't need lies. And she stares down Dagmer from her perch as she gets to Aeron, far away, forcing her head to stay up as his distantly sways.

"What is dead may never die," he tells her, or the salted air around her, far from what is their home, but she wonders if everywhere near the sea is his home and that is his price for being alive again.

"What is dead may never die," each word a sentence, pained and hard. _Men die and they never come back, uncle. You never died and you can. Just as these men can. But they will rather live than die fighting me. _ She refuses to bow her head, crusted with sand and dirt, but that's how battle goes; she's ironborn, salt and sea. _They cannot take that, no matter what name they give me. _

There are more islands.

This one falls to her so she will pick it up, of course. That night she smiles yet again, real this time, and not choking back the illness of other's words pushed into her mouth to taste. That night she dreams. There's a room with the Seastone Chair and she makes her way toward it, but can't; her cloak is caught in the ground, her gray fur cloak like the one she had in Winterfell, so she turns to free it but it's caught in another throne. And when she turns back around the Seastone chair is gone. She walks to the throne behind her and seats herself there and her cloak grows thinner until the fabric rots off her skin and she tries to cover herself but there's thin, wasting fabric growing back over her. _It was made that way, _a voice tells her and the doors of the room pound, pound, pound from the outside. _They all are sometimes. _

Xx

Thea wraps her cloak tighter around her chest, scowling into the gray sky, Pyke fading behind her. _If I must be a reaver I will be the best of my name,_ no- she is the first of her name and that means nothing. _I will be the best reaver my father would have never expected. I will make them all bow, each and every one swearing fealty to my name and his. _Dagmer and Aeron stand behind her, to her sides, but she pays no mind to them, and they could truly be anywhere by now.

She'd chosen metal to clothe herself in that time, over her chest so as not to look too much a woman. _I came to them and they called me a whore but over my dead body will they deny me again. I am their princess. In metal rather than a crown and red silk, not like that little golden haired girl who sewed birds on cloths with Sansa. Neither of them were birds- little Myrcella is a lion or a stag. And Sansa, soft as she seemed, is a wolf, whatever they do to her, they can tell her to forget her claws but they will never change her blood. And no one will ever change mine. I will not fear the sword. I am protected. I know what I am doing. _

She turns to command the men further on the ship. She (and Aeron and Dagmer, and her father) had told them basic things. But they will be hers for now. "When we approach land," she tells them over the roaring of the sea. Some listen, some don't. In time they all will. "You may take gold. You may take yourselves a fortune if you will! Maybe even a house if it can be yielded. Any women…if any one will have you!" she half- teases. "But any woman taken by force is not for you to waste time with!" she says after a pause and the men stand serious. "You came to conquer, not to go whoring! _Remember this! _I mean to be a gentle ruler," her eyes mean to be fierce. "But I will not be weak-handed." She raises her heavy sword, cold metal blistering against her hand. She has one now- her father presented her with one- it's bigger than the ones in Winterfell, of course, those were just practice ones she used every once in a while, anyway, she used the arrows for hunting. It loves her. Not the way a bow and arrow does, or the way Asha's husband and child love their handler, but it loves her touch. "Now! Upon capturing our lands we will advance forward. We will not lie around and wait for the North to bow to us. We will _take_ it!" she waits for them to agree, and some of them cheer and some of them go back to sailing and more than a few of them shout _Lady Thea, Lady Thea, _and _Princess,_ and _for King Balon_ and only then does her mouth crack open, her teeth grinding together in a smile.

_If I were to be captured by these Northmen they'd tear me limb from limb, or give me to their king. But they won't! They won't, if only because they can't!_

"What is dead may never die," says Aeron.

She throws back her head, the hood of her cloak falling over her shoulders and the salt air spraying her face, and she laughs so hard her chest aches. She has no trouble stopping.

_Xx_

The reaving hadn't gone terribly; so far they've even captured some land, but this isn't what's on Thea's mind. She cannot expect to keep any land if none of the men on the land want her to have it, and she cannot expect to be loved by them if they spit on her.

And that is exactly what Tallheart has done as he staggers in place, bleeding and wounded, mark upon mark. _Fool, _she rages internally, _if I were cruel I could have whipped him to death. _"What have you done, turncloak," he shouts at her. That ugly word. Somehow it seems worse than the others, as bad as the spit she claws off her face. "Now Robb's wolf will eat your turncloak heart." _Grey Wind knows what a threat is. He'll not eat my heart, you prattling bull. _ She knows she should think about what would go on if they were to meet again. _It will happen now, I suppose. What is dead may never die? Would that matter? _

"You must kill him, my niece," Aeron informs him, his voice is always the same. "He must die now." _But doesn't that go against what you keep saying? _Really, him and his faith, him and his living death in the water. Not everything is life and death.

"Uncle," she tells him, stress confining her voice. _I am not under his command. I cannot be both a 'turncloak' and weak in these people's eyes. _"I must ask him questions first." _And I cannot kill men left and right while screaming about the Drowned God if I am going to go about this. _

"Fuck your turncloak's questions, woman!" he must know he's in no place to rebel. Some men face death than others. Some men rush into it. "I hope you choke on them. Craven. Traitor." He spits out insults rather than choke on them, and they fall from his mouth to her feet and they cling to her. _And I know you will choke! Don't do this, Tallheart,_ but he is.

"He spits on all of us. He must die," her uncle grows more forceful and the ocean's roaring fills his head, she can tell it's possessing him once more the way his voice rises.

"Uncle. My father gave me command," she tells them all firmly. They must not think her a weakling at the command of her father and her family, _they would never see Asha that way. _

"And sent me to counsel you." _They will listen to you when they fail to do so for me. _She hates to admit it…but if he's here then he is of use. He may be mad, but he is known better than she is. _Better drowned than a _turncloak,_ better anyone than me. _

"You will lose your head," Tallheart insists again. _Then you will too. You've already lost most of your blood. _"The Others bugger your wet god!" _And now it's about gods and monsters. All I did was choose to go where I belonged! _They'll never understand and maybe they're not meant to. She didn't come here to talk.

She raises her head, commanding- "silence him." She watches with equal silence as the men- her men- push him to his knees and he does not resist, he goes down strong and himself, his own. _No, fuck you, Tallheart, and your words and curses and you spoke for him when I knew him better than any of you ever will. You call me a traitor. And that is all you can claim of me. _Stygg, one of her men, readies his axe. _I will watch his head come off the same as I have throughout this reaving, and during the battles before. When I was not their turncloak scapegoat. It is just a head. _

"No. He must be given to the gods in the old way." _This is not prayer time, _she wants to tell him. "He must be given to the gods the old way." _Then they will hate you as they hate me, uncle. And you can be their slaughterer. It's all the same. These green men have never loved us or our ways or your god._

"Then take him," she stares down Tallheart. If she is to be the lady of these isles then she will not turn away from their ugliness and only acknowledge what is hers when it is good and proper. _I am ironborn. _

"You will come as well. You command here. The offering should and will come from you." She pauses to make sure he's not only contemplating it. _Of course not, _her stomach drops. _He means for me to carry this out before these men right now and swear to the Drowned God. _

She shakes her head, the strands of sand-covered hair waving over her eyes. "Uncle. You are the priest." _I will not beg. I must make myself clear. _"Yours is the holy work. And you must leave the battles to me…no matter what else." She gestures for Tallheart to be taken out of her sight, and better it is to her. She's never drowned a man before, and honestly, she never thought she'd ever be expected to. _On ships men fall and drown but to drown a man with my own hands…_it's as foreign as it sounds. _He was wounded, I could have done it, though his size was greater than mine. _When she takes it all she will not live under the command of any priest and his ancient regulations. _A few years past I visited here with Eddard Stark. It had seemed smaller then. Or bigger. It seemed like the other side of a reflection. _She'd certainly never imagined to be ordering men killed with her uncle among the screams of dying Northmen and their screeching horses, and her own men cheering for they'd won, they'd won and so had she. _It is mine, of course, and I take what is mine. _They always do, the ironborn, and have been since the old days. _But it is now. No one remembers that. _

She walks away, over the horses painted black (she swallows at their grotesque sights. _They're just beasts,_ she tells herself and looks away.) with drying blood and wounded men. It's hard to tell who is who. People become unrecognizable after a while if no one keeps track of them. Some of the dead men are jeweled, but she had not taken any. Her father probably wouldn't even take kindly to her ornamenting herself then. _I am not one people approve of easily. _

A drunk man – his name is Todric- and Old Botley, another man with his sons are together, drinking and wearing and counting the gains they have taken from the northmen. Her eyes scan the surroundings, grey and red, and she sees Wex among them, one of the less red sights. At least he's familiar – no, it all is, in a way. "My bow and quiver," she stiffly asks of him, barely looking at him or anyone as Todric drunkenly lumbers. _I cannot take anything with men like this, _she tells herself. _All I will take with unsuitable forces is men's laughter and blank northmen's faces and anything my father has to offer to me, and that word, over and over again. I will not have them mock me. They are in my command, and by virtue, my family's. _She snaps her hands back into the bow and arrow- so much better than a sword, really- preparing to shock them all, as they deserve, and Todric moves at the last moment, her arrow shooting through his stomach.

"No drunkards and no fighting over plunders. I will say it again. I do not want to," _I do not want to repeat myself and I do not want to spend my days killing my own men for acting like fools. _"Botley…please silence him." _Silence him_ is the best way to say it, _kill him _is usually already happening. If a man will die, then it's better quick. _And I will not be known for torturing my own men to slow demises. They will never say that of me. _Botley and his sons slit Todric's thick neck and strip him of his stolen northmen's garb. _We take what is ours. And it will not be yours as long as I can take, will I have to say that? If it comes to it. They must know it by now, I am no soft green northman lordling's bedwarmer messenger in silks. I am Balon's daughter, and I could very well one day be their queen whether they'd like it or not. If they will not follow me then they cannot expect me to bend to them. _She smiles, somewhat feeling better, but that's not saying much, really, as the last time she did a man spit on her. "Would anyone else care for some ale?" She looks around, her eyes resting on a fallen banner. Tallheart's, and his heart beats no more. _It seems a turncloak's heart goes on longer than yours. You fool. Oh, you fool. _She wonders why the men around her do not seem like victors. Even the drunkards were cavorting as if it were commonplace rather than celebration.

They barely say anything as she leaves. _Was this what it was like for Asha? _She thinks bitterly, trying not to fall over the dead men. _So many of them. If they had just kneeled they would not need have died. _

She's gray with wet dust once more when she returns to the Sea Bitch, and her fair maid of a ship is the only thing standing out among the shore, the shore that was a dim pool and now she's made it into a scorched wasteland. The kept-alive northmen have given warning to Torrhen's Square and the men on board tell her news, most of which she reacts to with knotted eyebrows and a cold gaze. _You rape so many women they all fall into one another in your minds. I suppose that never changes, _she dryly thinks. _You tell me of this to threaten me, do you? I wonder what you'd say if I told you I'd drown you if you ever even mentioned it again. Most of you don't care for me anyway. I wonder if this is how Asha learned. Or maybe she was just born the way she was and everyone knew, she knew who she was and they had to as well._ And they tell her of Asha, of course, on the path to some other castle to take. _And they will remember her as a kraken queen and they know me as some reaver thief with an old priest. A reaver thief who everyone calls turncloak, a turncloak who is known to run away for one king and whore for another. They know nothing of me. _But she goes to Deepwood Motte and Moat Cailin, soon, though. _I cannot go back. No matter what they say. _She's not sure if that's good anymore.

Dagmer's rough voice snaps her out of her train of thought, and she gets her head out of her hands as he calls down to her, "the day is won. You do not smile, though, Thea. The living should smile, for the dead cannot." She does not recoil when his scarred, split face widens in a grin, she's seen it and seen worse. _If it were so easy I would rejoice the way you do. _ "We could hear them singing. It was a good song, and they sang it bravely." _Whatever it was,_ _it was just a song,_ she tells herself, _that takes no bravery. _

"They could have been better fighters than singers," she knows she's not an expert fighter, but at least she knows the proper times for singing.

"How many men are lost?" Dagmer asks, her old almost-uncle, and she wonders how many times he mourned people she once knew when she was gone, how many more he would as the time passes now. Hopefully not too many.

"Of ours?" she could not count the corpses of the northmen. She did not want to see if she knew them. "Only Todric. I shot him through his stomach but I aimed for his neck. He was drinking and fighting over money."

"Some men are born to be killed," Dagmer grins his smile of war, the one he never thought she was too soft to handle. It's just a scar. Anyone could have one someday. And he knows she knows that, always has- even now, she's the same to her, and that's better than being a greenlander. He knows. She supposes he may be right, she'll give him that much. _We all get killed. It's just a matter of how. Or when. _

"Uncle…" she tells him, he welcomes that from her. "We must talk."

"Come to my deck," he gestures for her to come up his Foamdrinker. She walks forward up its wooden strength, and back into the cabin where he leads her to.

"Uncle, we did not capture nearly enough horses. I …I can make do with what I got…I suppose the fewer men I have, then the more glory…" _I need that as much as I need horses. _

"What do we need of horses?" he furrows his eyebrows. "We have ships."

She prepares her words, inhaling slowly. _If they will not see me as ironborn I cannot force them. But I can force other things. _"That is if we sailed…I had thought of another plan." She waits for him to react, her hands clenched into one another. _Aeron will never agree to this, he needs the sea. But you can, I know you can…we would be going back there anyway. I would. _Dagmer's eyes change, deep in tricky thoughts. _I should have been in command for real. If I were a man he would agree, maybe. If I were Asha they would all be by my side cheering for me to go forward. They would not for once think I was anything but what I am. I would have been trustworthy from the start. _

"Your lord father commanded us to only go to the coasts and nothing more…" Dagmer begins. _Because he could not trust in my abilities. Or maybe he did not want me deep in the northlands for fear I would swear fealty to Robb once more. Or both. _

"And you are my father's man," she tells him. Say words. They are just words.

"I am his best man, you know, and always have been," Dagmer informs her. _If I use that I know I can get him to agree. Men love flattery. _

"There is no man in the Iron Islands half so skilled with spear or sword," she tells him, "and they all fear you. They know exactly what you can do, what you have done. You survived a blade to your face, after all." _You are unbroken. If things were different I could be that way. But I would have to feel the cuts first. Survival is pain. And I will not let them see me in pain. _

Dagmer drinks some ale, pondering over her words. "With a man like you in my service, I could do so much more than old reaver's work on villages and burning old hovels. This is no work for Lord Balon's best man…" she tells him, and it really isn't, and she can get him there, she _can._ She has to do something.

He laughs. They always laugh. Her entwined hands tighten so hard her bones press into each other. "Oh, Thea," he says as if he sees so far through her he sees the past. Her mouth parts. "I saw you take your first step. Do you think I know nothing of you? I do not feel wasted on this. It is you that reaches." If it were anyone else to say so she'd fight their words with spite and coldness, but it's Dagmer, she cannot.

"I am left with this given work," she spits out, looking at the table, its old wood. She wonders if anyone's ever died there.

"You should not take it so hard, Thea. Your lord father does not know you anymore." _Oh, but he spoke as if he thought he did. _"Your sister was his solace after your brothers' death, and you going to the wolves. He was not sure how much of you was there when you returned. Your sister never failed him." The implications, unintentional may they be, make her ill. "He did not expect this, you see. He expected his sons to be his heirs…" _and he never expected me. _"Asha is his now." _I know what I am to him._

"I have never failed him either," she chokes. It's useless, but it shouldn't be. "He knows this. I am his _blood_," she shakes her head.

Dagmer's face darkens, though not at her. "Thea….the Starks had you for ten years. As long as you lived with your own blood. We knew you were the Wolf Boy's…" _if you say it I know I have no one here._ "You were close. You lived as family and he lived, for a time, as your king. How could your father have known where differences lay?"

She raises her head once more, her tongue thick. "I am my father's blood. I must prove myself, must I? I am no Stark. If he does not know it, he must learn it."

"You are now young. And more wars will come," as they always do for the Ironborn, she knows that much, "and you can learn more before then. For now, we take the Stony Shore." Her eyes widen. _Even you._

"My Uncle Aeron can do that. They fear and revere him, the ironmen do, and the Shore will fall to his feet and under the water." That much they both know for sure could be true. "We will keep Foamdrinker and Sea Bitch."

"These islands are to your command." _Then why must I be guided throughout them?_

She narrows her eyes, her mouth rising just enough to look as if she is smiling at him. "The task I had in mind was one that requires someone like you. This task is no ordinary task, but one for you…and me. I may have yet to prove myself, but that does not mean I have nothing. And you will have much."

"Tell me," he says between drinks, this time his voice does not turn her away with laughter.

"If my sister can take a castle, so can I." _You will love that, won't you, Asha? You think I'm as weak as they all say, do you? But I'm your blood and if you are iron then I am too. Seaweed and seashells, two crowns, remember? I mean to take mine. _

"Asha has four or five times the men we do," Dagmer says as if her offer is not even something he can consider. He's seen much in his time. _But you have not seen where I mean to return to. It is inside of me and if I go back I can let it out._

She grins. "We have wits and courage. We do not have _nothing._"

"Thea, your father-" he warns.

"He will be shocked, but he will see what I am capable of. I can give him a kingdom, and the singers will know my name for a thousand years and more." _They will know me as a turncloak for a few fortnights now, but for years they will know me as a princess. They will know me for me. Someone will. A song like Dagmer's, or more songs. I will not live through almost-death, I will be a ruler. _Dagmer's eyes go to the side, then back to her, strong with consideration.

"What would my part be in this scheme of yours?" _you may call it a scheme . But it will be called better things in times to come. _She smiles this time for real, her mouth softening. _Yes._

"Make the foes terror-struck and incapable of fighting. And sing as you do it if you will, sing to the Drowned God and seven hells you're coming for them. March on Torrhen's Square, you will." She can feel herself straightening, her bones turning to heated iron. It feels strange. "Helman Tallhart took his best men south, and Benfred died here with their sons. His uncle Leobald will remain, with some small garrison. You will have victory without a doubt."

"Is this Torrhen's Square a strong keep?" he clasps the cup of ale in his hands, but his question is not doubtful to her unsteady elation. _This can be smooth if it is done right. And it must be._

"Strong enough." It almost sounds right. "The walls are stone, thirty feet high, with square towers at each corner and a square keep within." _All walls can fall. _

"Stone walls cannot be fired," he counters. _He is older and knows the ways of these things. But I know the north._ "How are we to take them? We do not have the numbers to storm even a small castle." She tilts her head, not wanting to hear the words, but soon, she tells herself, they will be only words that once could have been true.

"You will make camp outside their walls and set to building catapults and siege engines," it's obvious.

"That is not the Old Way. Have you forgotten?" She shakes her head stiffly, her lips pressed together. It's hot in the cabin but she feels cold. "Ironmen fight with swords and axes, not by flinging rocks. There is no glory in starving out a foeman." _It will work. Ironborn find ways, they always do. _

"Leobald will not know that. When he sees you raising siege towers, his old woman's blood will run cold, and he will bleat for help." _I am no old woman. I know how that lot work. Old stories of hiding from the miseries of the world. Nowhere is safe, though. I know that. I am hard enough. "_Stay your archers, Uncle, and let the raven fly. The castellan at Winterfell is a brave man, but age has stiffened his wits as well as his limbs. When he learns that one of his king's bannermen is under attack by the fearsome Dagmer Cleftjaw, he will summon his strength and ride to Tallhart's aid. It is his duty. Ser Rodrik is nothing if not dutiful." She does not think of what Winterfell's king will do when he learns his home is now a land of an ironborn princess. _I will not think of that now. I will not think of it at all. _

"Any force he summons will be larger than mine," Dagmer said, _but it will not matter _she thinks and forces a lopsided smile, "and these old knights are more cunning than you think, or they would never have lived to see their first grey hair." _I am more cunning than you think, elsewise I'd still be in the north hiding under furs and waiting for my father to kill my warden's sons._ "You set us a battle we cannot hope to win, Thea. This Torrhen's Square will never fall." _And that's where you'll all be wrong._

It's not perfect, but it can be, or something like that. Something like her father never expected from her, something that her sister can do, something that's made of songs but filled with salt and smoke, true and better. "It is not Torrhen's Square I mean to take," she smiles to herself, running her hands over the scarred wood of the table.

_The Princess of Winterfell, first of her name, _echoes hollowly in her head, hollow but weighted. _Soon you'll understand,_ she thinks, and it's more to herself than anyone else, but no one will ever have to know that. Some things nobody is meant to know, really. For better and worse. _And when all else is forgotten I will be known,_ she knows that much. If she takes her name, takes what they will know her as, she can be free of all else. They will not sing of it. But they will all bleed and fight and die until someone must sing of something; that's how men _are_, and ironborn.

She never would have thought any of it would have happened. That must mean it will be extraordinary. _At the very least it will be memorable,_ she tells herself, and her teeth show and her contented expression cancels out laughter and weeping, smothers all thoughts.


End file.
